ABSTRACT
One of the difficulties of exploring different forms of arts criticism is that tracking their progress is far-reaching and yet patterns emerge that make the study of these forms particularly interesting. One development of arts criticism in the twentieth century is the elevation of the critic into a personality. Understanding how critics documented the first 50 years or so of television is to understand a wider context involving the suspicion initially levelled at the box itself, plus the changing habits of wealthier families with more time for leisure and relaxation, and the medium's ability to fire the imagination in ways that novels must have done some 300 years before. The changes critics have seen go well beyond the arrival of the Web but extend to the art they experienced, from shifts in style and tone within their field of expertise to the creation or even collapse of arts and entertainment forms as they knew them.
