Definition of a TV critic: Someone who earns a wage evaluating other people’s work because that person can’t earn a wage doing the work themselves.
Roger Catlin is the tv critic for the Hartford Courant. Pay attention. TV critic for the Hartford Courant. The Hartford Courant is owned by The Tribune Co., which also owns WTIC, channel 61, a TV station.
He works for a company that’s competing for the same ratings and revenues as the TV stations in Hartford he’s critiquing. Catlin’s job as an employee is to help his company earn as much money as possible. That’s the same job you have at your company and the same one I have at mine — help the corporation be as profitable as possible.
So, Catlin’s job, by definition, is to criticize other stations in Hartford in the hopes that his critiques will influence viewers to change channels from, say, Better Connecticut (a new informational and lifestyles program which airs on WFSB Channel 3) to, say, Jerry Springer (well, you know what Jerry Springer is, which airs on WTIC).
Therefore, everyone of those little TV critiques you see in the paper is influenced by Catlin’s own agenda: Trash the competition.
It’s difficult to be objective with that kind of agenda.
Of course, I’m just some guy on TV, WFSB Channel 3. I might not be right.
