I need your help. If you're a regular reader of this website -- or any member of the print, electronic or online media or academic community -- I'm looking for guidance. I'm embarking on a path that may be unprecedented, and may also be foolish. But since this newly blazed trail is dependent entirely upon your trust in my opinions, I figure I should solicit, and trust,
youropinions as well.
When I launched TV WORTH WATCHING last November, the day my farewell TV column was published in the New York Daily News, I included a pledge for the future. I would never accept ads from any show or network I didn't like, and the acceptance of any ad wouldn't dictate how, or whether, I wrote about, that show or network in the future.
At the time, that was just a theory. But now, unless I'm overruled by public opinion, it's about to become reality. The folks at the PBS documentary series P.O.V. approached me a few months ago about running an ad on my site, keyed to the June launch of their 21st season. We struck a deal, my website guy inserted it on the right side of the page as our inaugural ad (thanks, Rich!), and it's been running all month. Check it out and poke around... but, please, finish reading this first.
Because the season premiere, Katrina Browne's Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, is televised tomorrow night at 10 ET (check local listings), I figured now was the time to defend my decision to accept advertising -- and to seek advice on how to proceed in the future.
First, and very important (at least to me), this never was intended as a nonprofit enterprise. I've been writing best bets daily, and columns (a.k.a. blogs) five days a week, for eight months now, for no salary -- and my Daily News wages, at the same time, have vanished into the "no salary" category also. Making the site subscription-based was something I'd never consider -- anyone who cares enough about my opinion to seek it out has me in their debt already, not the other way around.
But ads from programs and networks I support critically anyway, that's another thing. Except for my column/blog, which addresses anything relevant about television, TV WORTH WATCHING -- by design and nature as well as by name -- is meant to identify and champion the best. The best shows, the best DVD releases, the best books about TV, even the best theme songs. In an Internet universe where so much is so negative, the aim here is to celebrate the positive.
To me, it makes sense that the ads should reflect that same sensibility. You might find an ad for NBC's 30 Rock on this site, but you'll never find an ad for the same network's Celebrity Circus. It all comes down to personal taste on my part, and trust on your part. Trust in my ability to keep advertising and editorial separate, and trust in the consistency and honesty in my body of work.
Here's the deal. I worked as a TV critic on daily newspapers from 1975 until last November. Time and again, over the years, there have been occasions where appearances of impropriety have been raised, confronted and tested. My favorite was when I had it written into my contract at the New York Post, when it was owned by Rupert Murdoch, that I had editorial independence when it came to story selection and the content of my reviews.
So when Murdoch launched the Fox network and sent one show after another down the pike, I hated them all, and said so in his flagship New York paper. Hated them all, that is, until Fox developed The Tracey Ullman Show and its spinoff The Simpsons, which I adored from the start. That may not have gotten me on Murdoch's Christmas card list (in fact, it didn't), but readers, I hope, decided over time I could be trusted.
I still love The Simpsons, which is now approaching its 20th year. There aren't that many TV critics still working who were around to review that first Christmas special in 1989, and that's the other reason I'm hoping to have built enough residual goodwill to support the concept of advertising.
If you've read this site with any regularity, my tastes should be fairly transparent. I gravitate towards smart dramas, smart and silly comedies, and, because I also love movies, tend to mix in an old black-and-white classic among my nightly recommendations. But what I hope I bring to the Internet, which a lot of bloggers don't, is a professionalism that comes from more than three decades of watching, and writing about, TV. My own output, over the years, is the standard to which I ask, and hope, to be judged.
That means, when I write about about the first handful of programs in the new season of P.O.V., it isn't because of any ad. It's because I've taken the time to see all five programs. All of them, by coincidence or design, have to do with race or class, and past or present injustices inflicted on various minorities. And each documentary, in its own way, is stirring and disturbing. (I'll review the season opener in more detail tomorrow.)
P.O.V., in a way, is the perfect test case for advertising on this site, because the series premiered in 1988 -- predating even The Simpsons -- and I reviewed it positively from the start. I don't keep every clip from those days (a lightning strike saw to that), but I do have two 1990 reviews, from my New York Post days, calling P.O.V. "a pointedly, almost defiantly, subjective showcase" and "intriguing and indispensable."
Like any anthology showcase, P.O.V. has had its ups and downs, and my thumbs have gone up and down accordingly. But anyone who thinks that, back in 1989 and 1990, I was supporting P.O.V. because I envisioned -- a mere two decades down the line -- that there would be an Internet, I would have a website, and P.O.V. would be ripe for the ad-revenue plucking -- is even more insane than I am for starting TV WORTH WATCHING in the first place.
But I believe in quality television, and P.O.V. easily, proudly qualifies. I hope I've done enough -- in print, in books, on the radio, even on the web -- to establish credibility as I shift into this scary new medium. The question is -- and it's a question that's anything but rhetorical, so please weigh in -- am I right?
And if not, can anyone suggest a workable Plan B?