When TV Writers Stop Quillin' and Start Shillin'

Some critics love to have their blurbs quoted in ads. Some dread it. (When Fox highlighted an especially overheated quote from my review of Dark Angel--"We have seen the Woman of the Future, and she kicks butt"--I wanted to go into hiding for a week.) Either way, they don't generally show up themselves to do the blurbing. But ABC, and writers from Entertainment Weekly, People (both of them TIME's sister publications) and TV Guide have broken new ground, reports the New York Times:

To promote its fall lineup, ABC Television produced three half-hour preview shows that are the stuff of a television executive’s fantasy: they feature editors and writers from three big magazines who have traded their critics’ hats for pom-poms.

“I think if you liked ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ you’re going to love ‘Private Practice,’ ” gushes Alynda Wheat, a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly, in one of the shows.

About another new program, Ms. Wheat says, “If there’s anything this season I’m excited about, it’s ‘Dirty Sexy Money.’ I mean, it just seems like so much fun. And it’s probably going to be the thing we’re talking about come fall.”

Working with a network to promote its shows may come across as contrary to journalistic objectivity, but the editors say it was just a lending of expert opinion.

Ewww, right? See samples of the promos here and here and collected at ABC's YouTube page.

To be honest, I was hesitant to write about this. First, because I'm a big fan of some of these people: I'm not fit to carry Ken Tucker's remote, for instance, and Michael Ausiello of TV Guide is maybe the best TV scoop-gatherer out there right now. Second, because God knows I've done embarrassing media appearances before. Third, because ABC didn't ask me to do the show, so I suppose you might think this is sour grapes (if you didn't know what tedious hell getting caked in makeup and doing a TV interview is). And finally because--given the desperate, buzz-obsessed state of journalistic outlets today--I have no idea how "voluntary" these writers' participation was.

But still, ewww. Nothing wrong with TV critics doing TV. If anything, TV journalists should do more TV. (Someone's gotta stick it back to Gene Shalit! Damn movie critics!) But sitting down with a network for a program that's intended to sell its own shows? Have I said ewww yet?

My bosses at Time Inc. agree. "I'm sure everyone involved in this project had the best of intentions, but we won't be doing this next season," says Jim Kelly, the managing editor of Time Inc., who's responsible for overseeing Time Inc.'s journalistic standards and practices. TV Guide's communications director, Julie Farin, defends the magazine's participation: "TV Guide's editors participated in the ABC special on comedies in order to provide color commentary--on the show's plot lines, the characters, and the actors--not to critique the shows. That we leave to our senior TV critic [Matt Roush], who declined to participate in the ABC special for this very reason."

The thing is, insofar as I know the writers mentioned in the article (or know their work, anyway), I believe they all have integrity. I doubt any of them said anything about a show they didn't mean. But if one of them, say, hated Big Shots, you think that quote's going to make it on air? I suspect the writers that ABC borrowed--not to mention their magazines' publicity departments--are "expert" enough about TV to know the answer to that question.