Writing reviews of TV

Do you read reviews of television shows before/after they’ve been on air? Either to find out what they’re going to be like or whether others agreed with you? Do you go to the pros or the enthusiasts?

The number of people employed to review television shows in the UK for major newspapers are on the slide. This doesn’t apply so much to magazines as they often work to a niche - but in newspapers the numbers are declining and a lot of it is down to bloggers.

This, in my view is a VERY good thing on one hand and a bad thing on the other.

The good side comes from the fact that any democratisation of media is a good thing - the more people talking about something - the more information there will be on that thing and the more variety of opinion - hopefully.

However, one the flip side of that coin you have the bad thing. The one big difference between the vast majority of bloggers and traditional journalists - in my limited experience an dopinion (as someone on both sides) is access.

Journalists, especially those with a big media company behind them, tend to be able to get access to information, people and things that a hobbyist blogger can’t.

This isn’t always true - there are some VERY GOOD bloggers who get access to people and stories through 1) personal contacts or 2) being louder and bolder.

Although more doors are being opened to bloggers - political conventions, tech shows and even TV screenings - the number of blogger places compared to ‘traditional journalists - even if those traditional journalists will be writing about it on their ‘company blog’ is pretty limited.

This is where the TV review part comes in.

Unless the show being reviewed is an American one that was released six months ago in the USA and is only just coming to the UK - and the blogger has already seen it in one of the usual places - chances are a blog review will be a post airing review.

This means that, more often than not people have already seen the episode in question and have already either hated it, loved it or couldn’t give a damn (although if you’re looking for a review of a TV show chances are you loved or hated it - you don’t go searching for something you felt was a bit Meh very often).

In this instance then - the post air review - people reading it will be going out to find other peoples opinion but more often to add their own voice to what someone else has said - so more conversational than anything else.

That’s why I love the Final Gear and Doctor Who forums - they let me go and read what other people thought of an TV show I’d just watched and see how it compares to my thoughts.

This can sometimes be VERY frustrating as internet discussion is like smacking your head against a very large and solid object while punching yourself in the testicles with one hand and trying to prove String Theory with the other.

But it does give you an outlet - so basically a post air review is more like the start of a discussion than a ‘review’ as such.

An example of that would be Bonekickers - here’s the episode from iPlayer for anyone in the UK that hasn’t seen it yet.


The first episode recieved a fairly universal panning - people hated it and I decided not to watch it because of that - but I’ve since caught up and watched this episode as it went out last night - I’ve loved them both.

The trick with this show is to go into it without thinking of it becoming some heavy drama like Spooks - see it more as a bit of fun light entertainment drama more like Hustle.

Anyway - paid reviewers.

What a paid reviewer can often offer is a preview review - given that most will be shown the episode before it airs on television they can tell you what you thought about it so that you can decide whether you really want to invest your time in it.

They can give you information and clues about whats coming, they can be funny and interesting on the side and do more than just tell you about the TV.

But so can motoring columnists (Clarkson, May) and so can MANY bloggers.

In my opinion the fall of the paid reviewer doesn’t just fall to the hands of the blogger and fan forum. To me it falls to the shift of viewing patterns.

An ever increasing (millions according to the BBC) number of people are watching their shows in their own time - either on demand over the web (iPlayer, 4OD) or through a recorded medium like Sky+.

This means that - as long as the blogger watched it live - or on demand first they will most likely have a review up of a show before a significant number of people have had the chance to watch it.

And a blogger, unlike a magazine columnist, can put the video from iPlayer (especially if the BBC start to enable embedding more easily) at the top/bottom or even - in this case middle - of the article so that the reader can catch up while reading.

Then they can comment on the article underneath - or write their own blog post as soon as they finish.

Maybe the BBC could implement some kind of aggregation around shows where they can pull in snippets of reviews of episodes on the iPlayer underneath that episode to help people decide whether to invest their time in it or not.

This would be a more social alternative to just using a comment system but probably MUCH more of a headache editorially.

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