Peak Technique

If you feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of television that’s worth watching these days, imagine the pressure television critics must feel.

Never before in the history of the medium have there been so many scripted original series to be watched and analyzed. This abundance is due in large part to cable networks and streaming services, which are on overdrive when it comes to original production.

Consider these statistics from FX Networks Research: in 2010, there were 216 scripted original series. By 2015, that number had shot up to 420. It kept rising, hitting 454 in 2016. And just when you thought the networks and streaming services couldn’t possibly produce more content, FX Networks CEO John Landgraf announced at the Television Critics Association press tour this past January that there could be nearly 500 scripted original series by the end of 2017.

So how has this epic flood of television affected the way critics do their jobs? Emmy’s Christine Champagne spoke to five to find out.

Tim Goodman

The Hollywood Reporter

“I completely and utterly love what I do, so that keeps me going,” Goodman declares. But he admits it's a challenge to keep up with today’s torrent of television.

Before joining the Reporter in 2010, Goodman was the television critic at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he was able to cover everything he wanted to write about during his 10-year run.

“There was definitely a steady climb in the number of shows, but it was very manageable. In fact, I was covering a lot of unscripted series, which I think is pretty much unheard of for TV critics now,” he muses. “That is just not possible.”

These days, Goodman focuses on scripted fare, and even that’s difficult. “2015 is the year that completely broke me, because it was impossible to watch every show. I’m a completist, and I like to cross things off lists, so in some ways the current environment is maddening — because you can never catch up.”

Managing workflow is a hot topic at TCA press tours. “It’s been something that we’ve talked about pretty regularly for the last three years. The fact of the matter is, everybody’s different. There are people who are content to spend every waking hour watching shows and writing about them, but my feeling is that you have to have a life. You have to have a balance.”

Even though he does screen a lot of shows, Goodman accepts that he just can’t watch everything, “I work from home, which is a benefit for me, and maybe a curse. I’m not in the office being distracted by actual human beings, and I’m pretty much watching constantly.”

And there’s the writing, of course. In addition to writing reviews and his famous “failure analysis” columns, Goodman also covers the television industry as a beat. “I want to write more analysis pieces and fewer reviews,” he says. “The job, for me, as a critic is not as exciting if all you do is review television shows.”

Eric Deggans 

NPR

“I don’t have to cover everything. What I do have to do is try to figure out how to say something a little different about most things,” Deggans says. “I have to try to see trends before they happen — or figure out a way to conceptualize those trends as they’re happening.”

NPR’s first full-time television critic, he is heard on shows such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered. “I want to make sure that NPR weighs in on every important show, one way or another,” he says. “It’s a process of constantly trying to figure out what’s going to matter.”

Deggans began his career as a television critic in 1997 at the St. Petersburg Times, back in the era before prestige cable. He used to be able to watch everything he had to see at home in the evening and in the morning before he went into the office. He focused on writing during the day.

“Now, I’m to the point where there’s so much stuff, the balance of my job has changed, and I do more TV watching in the office,” he says. “I’ll have days when I say, Okay, today is TV–watching day in the office.”

Even the way he screens shows is different these days. Early in his career, Deggans could put on some shows, sitcoms in particular, and do other things. With just one eye on the screen, he could get a sense of whether a show was good or not. But nowadays he has to pay rapt attention, because many shows are so intricately executed.

“Many scenes depend now on things that you see but you don’t hear,” he explains, citing HBO’s Westworld finale.

“I was paying attention to it,” he says, “and I still found myself occasionally going back a minute or two just to make sure I heard what I thought I heard and to make sure I saw what I thought I saw. They were dropping a lot of crucial plot twists in that final 90 minutes.”

Maureen Ryan 

Variety

“From day one of being a TV critic, I have always felt like I was behind on many things, whether it was writing about shows, or simply watching shows and trying to keep up with what’s out there,” says Ryan, who began writing about the medium in the early aughts.

But it was back in 2006, at the Chicago Tribune, that she started to feel as though it was impossible to see every notable show. She laughs now, thinking back to that time and how it compares to the present in terms of volume.

“Now,” she says, “there’s just a full-on admission among all critics that I know: there might be things that other people really champion and think are wonderful that you might not ever see, or not see for a long time.”

As she compiled her Best TV Shows of 2016 list for Variety, Ryan knew there would be omissions — great shows that might have made the list if she’d only had the time to see them.

“I’m at peace with that,” she says, noting she takes some comfort in knowing that her colleague Sonia Saraiya, also a television critic at Variety, may have written about shows she missed. Ryan would rather not review a show at all than write a rushed or sloppy piece just for the sake of covering something.

“I don’t ever want to be unfair to TV or unfair to a new show because I’ve just been too overwhelmed. To be an effective critic, you have to have time for your brain to process things, and not be actively writing, evaluating or assessing, because these facilities can break down with overuse.

“You can start to just churn out words that maybe you don’t really believe — they’re just something to fill up the space — and that’s not who I want to be. I think that’s how a lot of critics feel. You want to have some authenticity to everything you write.”

James Poniewozik 

The New York Times

When Poniewozik started his first full-time gig as a television critic — for Time in 1999 — there were far fewer shows, and he worked much the way a movie critic would. “As a film critic, you might not necessarily have time to watch every film release, but you probably have time to watch every major release over the course of a year, whether you’re going to review it or not.” 

But these days, Poniewozik, who’s been a television critic for the New York Times since 2015, works very differently. “Now, being a television critic is more like being a book critic,” he says. “A book critic has a stack of galleys on their desk, and a lot of the job involves reading the first five or 20 pages of a whole lot of things and deciding what to keep and what to throw away.”

He says it’s like “triage — deciding what you’re going to pay attention to.” There are hard decisions to be made, but once Poniewozik, who’s one of three TV critics at the Times, decides he’s going to review a series, he commits to it. “I feel obligated to watch as much as was supplied — with the occasional exception. I think if you’re not watching everything supplied, you should disclose that.”

Poniewozik spends 40 to 50 hours a week working. “I could work far more than that,” he says, “but I have found, and this probably applies to journalists and professionals in general, that if you want to have a work-life balance — if you want to have time to do a job and have a family and be a father to your kids or whatever — you have to set those boundaries yourself. Nobody else will do that for you.

“You can have the nicest coworkers, the most understanding employer, the best editor in the world, but their priority is not going to be your fulfillment in life.”

Willa Paskin 

Slate

While television critics at the trade papers and newspapers of record might feel pressure to cover as much as humanly possible, Paskin has the freedom to be pickier, noting her job is to function as a filter for TV consumers.

“Acting as a filter has always been a critic’s job,” she says. “But now it’s the critic’s job not just to point you to what’s good, but to keep you from being overwhelmed by everything else. People really don’t need to hear about all 400 shows that came out, because nobody can watch 400 shows — and nobody wants to.”

Paskin, who’s been a television critic at Slate for five years, is watching more and more television with every year that goes by. Even so, she notes, “I do not feel like TV is running my life. This comes up a lot. People are like, ‘How do you all do it?’ And part of me is very eye-rolling about it because I think it is a good problem to have — like the least of the problems in the universe right now.”

Most critics review shows before they debut. Paskin does that, too, especially when a show is highly anticipated — but not always.

“The thing about reviewing shows before they come out is very old-fashioned,” she says, “and it’s from a print model [Slate is online only]. And we know now, based on what people actually read and [what we see in our site] traffic, that in almost all cases people would much rather read about a show they’re already watching than a show they haven’t watched yet.“

A review of a show before it comes out will almost always be less read than a piece about a show that is happening, or is in a later season.” To wit: “I wrote a review about [Netflix’s] Stranger Things at the beginning, and I suspect it would have done much better if I had written it when [the show] was so buzzy. Because not only were people more interested, I would have been able to have a conversation about it.”

 This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 2, 2017