Such an appointment would seem perverse and fanciful but, if the job were on the television pages rather than the sports pages, the above conversation would be fairly standard recruitment policy. There are at least two reported cases of national newspaper TV critics having to be bought a set at the time they signed up and, really late into the night at industry festivals, rumours circulate that one reviewer in the past refused to have a set in the house and relied on what he heard through his neighbour’s walls. The last anecdote is almost certainly apocryphal but the legends that develop around a profession are often revealing: it’s impossible to imagine, for instance, the myth growing up of a film critic who refused to watch movies or a theatre reviewer who always remained on the pavement outside in case his work affected his standing in society. And, even if such a figure existed, it’s impossible to think of them being employed by a major title. But while the weakness of theatre and dance critics as a breed is a tendency to over-praise from a sense of professional solidarity, the flaw of TV reviewers as a group is that they have often operated on the very opposite side of even-handedness, writing with fury-clenched fists. There are three reasons why British television attracts more hostile criticism than any other art form. The first is that newspapers instinctively resent TV. As the visual medium grew to maturity (of technology, if not content) in the 1950s and Why Newspapers Should Stop Publishing TV Reviews more...