How Has the Role of Newspaper-Based TV Critics Been Redefined in a Digital Media Landscape?

Abstract

In this chapter, I present an analysis of how TV critics working for the British press are redefining their role for the digital era. This is achieved by exploring the interplay occurring between critics, newspapers, online digital platforms, and the wider contextual environment. As I do this, I reflect on what this tells us about how the role taken by critics is changing and where these developments are leading. To provide a framework for this analysis, I use the five orientations utilized by Jaakkola et al. (2015) for their work exploring change happening in cultural journalism: knowledge orientation, audience orientation, power orientation, time orientation and ethical orientation. For each of these, I explore different aspects of change happening within the new online TV coverage. This includes looking at the role of the comment sections found on most online pages, the conflation of previews into reviews, the rise of the episodic review and shifts in the underlying values of critics. I end by raising the question of whether a new form of liquid criticism is developing, one which is more suitable for the new television and online press environments.