Raymond Snoddy on media: Where have all the TV critics gone?

On the geo-political scale, you can now be certain that Barack Obama is
going to win the Democratic nomination for the US presidency. When
Rupert Murdoch jumps on the bandwagon, you know that it's within
milliseconds of taking off.

Historians might also note that, even in this age of audience
fragmentation, the internet and multichannel television, 20m viewers
watched the finals of talent competitions on BBC and ITV last
weekend.

All very significant, of course - but there is still a nagging feeling
that there has to be a substantial reason why The Daily Telegraph is
giving up its daily television reviews after half a century. Things like
that don't happen by accident. If they didn't like the geezer doing the
column, these are hard-nosed guys who would simply find someone
else.

There is something much more sinister afoot. First The Mail on Sunday
axed TV reviews, then the Daily Mail, now the Telegraph. Something is
definitely up. But what?

It could be merely fashion. Few are so susceptible to its vagaries as
national newspaper editors, whose every whim is final.

Almost certainly, the thinking goes as follows. We no longer gather
around the electronic hearth watching the same old TV programmes, except
perhaps at Christmas. Therefore it follows that someone slaving away
commenting on programmes that most haven't actually seen is a waste of
effort, money and space.

Yet the Mail's editor, Paul Dacre, has not terminated the genre
entirely. Bizarrely, he has brought back the excellent Jaci Stephen one
day a week to comment on only one programme - the compelling but
formulaic The Apprentice. Only one programme a week out of hundreds,
many of them brilliant, worthy of comment?

Technology is the reason given for the axing of critics, but actually,
that's why they should be more important than ever. Despite previews or
soft features, no one can know when an excellent programme will burst
out of the dross and capture viewers' imagination. A judicious critic
can alert you to what you have missed and broadband catch-up services do
the rest.

Telegraph management will surely have noticed that iPlayer downloads are
now running close to 1m a day, markedly beyond the circulation of The
Daily Telegraph. A good critic can influence that traffic.

Daily reviewers cannot provide instant help for the growing hordes of
PVR owners, but a good word from a trusted scribe can at least mean you
miss only the first episode of a stellar show such as Mad Men. A good
critic can draw attention to the good and ambitious wherever it is found
and heap scorn on the meretricious - something quite different from PR
fluff features of the sort now planned. It's really a question of
protecting and encouraging standards, by a lone voice or two if
necessary.

You would have thought the editors of the Mail and Telegraph would have
been more interested in protecting standards than in succumbing to the
latest fashion. But these days, who can tell?

- Raymond Snoddy is a media journalist and presenter of BBC Television's
Newswatch

30 SECONDS ON ... THE VIRGIN RADIO SALE

- SMG announced on Saturday that it has sold the Virgin Radio station,
which operates under an FM licence in London, to a group led by a
subsidiary of the Times of India.

- It sold the rock music station for £53.2m, significantly less
than it paid for it eight years ago, when it picked it up as part of its
acquisition of Chris Evans' Ginger Media Group, which also included a TV
production company, for £225m.

- The sale is part of SMG's strategy of focusing on its ITV franchise in
Scotland, STV.

- The new owner has to find a new name for the radio station, and will
announce a fresh brand in the autumn. This will, however, free it from
the restrictions that go along with use of the Virgin brand.

- If, however, it decides to licence the Virgin name again within two
years, it will have to pay £8m for the privilege.