Tuned In

Ken Tucker's Watching TV

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A good thing, since he’s a TV critic for Entertainment Weekly. Since returning from from a stint as movie critic at New York magazine, Tucker has contributed to ew.com, but now he’s doing a daily blog for the site. The premise: Tucker watches TV every night. Then he writes about what he watched. Simplicity itself. 

I was happy to see it, because Ken’s been one of my favorite critics since before I was a TV critic myself. But it’s also an example of how a new medium has, ironically, revived an old way of doing criticism.

Long ago, before the widespread use of screeners, TV critics would most often review shows after they aired. (In Britain, for some reason, this is still much more common practice.) Now print critics more commonly preview shows for an audience that hasn’t seen them yet.

These are two different concepts of how criticism works and what it’s for: is it a consumer service that gives practical advice on how to spend money and time, or is it a form of analysis that sheds light on an experience you’ve already had? Is it a platform for someone to hand down the first opinion by dint of privileged access, or a forum for people to agree or disagree from a standpoint of equal information? 

Ironically, some print journos claim that new media have dumbed down discourse, but by bringing back the idea of critiquing works after they’ve come out, blogs have helped restored the idea that criticism is something more than a buyer’s guide—that discussing a work has value, maybe even more value, even after you’ve shelled out for a ticket or spent a couple hours of your life. 

I’ll take Ken’s thoughts before or after any day, so I’m glad to bookmark him.