TV Critics And The Glut Of Good TV

TV critic Alan Sepinwall wrote today's talker piece among his fellow critics with a long and well-considered piece on the challenges of keeping up with all of the good television currently on the air. Read his entire piece here, but this is the part I think may be the most telling:

You could argue that if I didn't review as many shows as I do on a weekly basis — another thing about my job that's changed enormously since I started — I'd have more time to watch things, but again, that's my job. People who are not professional TV critics have other things that occupy their time, and even if I were to somehow scale back the amount of writing I do to what I was doing in my Star-Ledger days (which was actually a whole lot, given the length and frequency of the column Matt Seitz and I wrote together in those days), I suspect I'd still be falling behind on my viewing.

I talked about this with James Poniewozik, who suggested the problem isn't with the top tier, but the tiers below it. Great shows may come and go, but there's a manageable number of them. I'm not going to miss an episode of "Mad Men" or "Justified" or "Game of Thrones," and new entries from FX, Showtime, etc., tend to stay at the top of the viewing priority list longer than, say, shows on CBS. And that's not a knock on the quality of CBS shows so much as it is the idea that crime procedurals (the bulk of their output) don't lend themselves as well to episode-by-episode dissection as the kinds of shows you find on cable.

If there is one factor that impacts the workflow of most critics working online, it's the need to write extensive episodic recaps of shows such as "Mad Men," "Game of Thrones" and "The Walking Dead." These recaps tend to be very strong traffic drivers and that makes it difficult for a critic to say no to the effort. Plus, there is something creatively satisfying about the process of dissecting complex shows every week.

One of the problems with that recap industry is that it eats into the time critics have to cover other shows - even a couple of times a season. It also impacts their ability to watch new shows from unexpected sources that may be worth covering. Looking through Google, I found at least 50 episodic takes on the last episode of "The Walking Dead." The show is certainly worth the attention, but are readers really served by that ugly mass of recaps?

TV critics have a strong an ego as anyone and the temptation is to think "Yeah, but MY recap is better than everyone else's." And that may well indeed be true. But are the points you are making that much more amazing than other critics?

Aside from whether recaps are a curse or a necessity, Sepinwall's piece resonated with most TV critics, who struggle with the same time management issues. I've handled it by watching as much as I can physically stand and then picking my battles when I decide what to review. We're a small site and that means if I'm committing the time to write something, I need it to count not just creatively but in the traffic numbers. I've found I can have the most impact picking my battles and covering shows that don't get a lot of attention from other critics. I write a lot about NCIS, which is arguably the top rated scripted series. But because of the perception among critics that it's a predictable procedural, it barely gets a review once the season starts. Each review I've done of the show has grabbed serious numbers as have one-off goofball recaps such as this week's snarky 1,200-word takedown of "NCIS: Los Angeles."

I also try and cover new shows that just don't get much attention. This week I reviewed "Granite Flats," the first scripted show from BYUtv. You could count the reviews of that show on one hand and as people looked for info on the show, they made their way here.

My answer to the time crunch has been to drop timely watching of some shows that are well covered by other critics. I lost interest in "Girls" pretty early this season and let it go. Though I'm sure I'll binge watch it one night on HBOGO. The same happened with "Glee" and "Revenge." I'm not going to spend my precious time watching a show I don't much enjoy right now and don't need to write about on a regular basis.

That having been said, I'm still behind on a lot of stuff. My three DVR's are near full and that's not counting the shows I have in the queue on Hulu Plus. Then there's the stack of screeners sitting on my desk. Another six or so came today and they stare at me with disapproval as I write this.

When you complain about having to watch too much television, it's hard to find anyone who's going to be sympathetic. But like Alan and most of my fellow critics, I know the challenge of wading through stuff that HAS to be watched and realizing that it's already 1:00 a.m.