Television critics play a central role in the interpretation of cultural forms, objects, and productions. In contrast to critics in elite art worlds, the role and status of television critics are less institutionalized and less well understood. One indicator of the degree and status of the institutionalization of critics’ roles is the codification of evaluative criteria and critical practices. Our research examines whether critics in television draw upon a recognizable set of evaluation criteria, and if so, whether that repertoire of aesthetic concepts increasingly parallels criteria employed by critics in elite art worlds. Using multidimensional scaling to delineate television criticism over the last two decades, a period of considerable transformation in the industry, we find that television criticism attends to a core set of conventional criteria. These include appraisal of formal aesthetic elements, signaling increased attention to television as an art form, while retaining consideration of factors such as entertainment value that are of interest to audiences and business constituencies alike.
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