This article explores how The Listener, a journal launched in 1929 by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), established itself as a site for serious radio criticism in the United Kingdom. However, such coverage did not appear fully formed, but developed and changed over time, depending on the critic(s) and the industrial and cultural contexts within which they worked. By looking at coverage from three periods – the mid-1930s, mid-1950s and mid-1970s – I propose that there have been different distinct phases taken by the radio criticism found within its pages. One important factor shaping the form taken has been the question of intermediality that, in this case, existed between radio and the printed form. Namely, the problem of developing a means of reviewing and critiquing an aural form within a printed medium dominated by traditional visual and literary criticism. Such an insight and understanding, of the way the radio discourse changed over time in The Listener, is vital as this journal has become, especially with its digitalization, an increasingly important resource for scholars working in the field of broadcasting.

Radio listings and radio highlights published by newspapers, have attracted limited scholarly interest. In many ways they appear as a form of information, reporting to the reader what the newspaper has been told will be broadcast that day. However, as I will argue in this article, radio listings and programme highlights provide an important insight into the intermedial relationship, which developed over time between radio and the print media. Indeed, the different forms they take are linked to the way newspapers and those that work there actively shape their coverage for their readerships. Listings are also important in how newspapers represent the geographic dimensions of radio, showing not only where the stations are broadcasting from but also where they are located on the airwaves. Again, these spatial representations change overtime depending on the needs and circumstances of the newspapers and broadcasters and developments happenings in the wider political, cultural and social context. In this work, I will present a discursive historical analysis of the listings and programme highlights found in British newspapers between 1920 and 1960 and how these forms came to represent radio in different ways for the readers. I will also, from this analysis, identify and develop concepts, such as the diachronic, synchronic, spatial and cultural intermediary, as important ways of understanding how the listings and programme highlights work to define and culturally position radio.

American programs have been a significant part of British television culture since the 1950s. Helping their mediation into British culture have been press critics who, in the past, have often been dismissive of such programs. However, as new forms of quality American programs have appeared, and online media have weakened the role of professional cultural intermediaries, a more supportive discourse has appeared. This chapter explores how contemporary American quality programs are being mediated into UK public debate. It will look at the website of one of the most important national UK newspapers, the Guardian, which has developed its online coverage of TV, often in ways more akin to fan sites, while encouraging public participation. The chapter will reflect on how the Guardian’s online strategy has served a niche UK readership interested in American programs, and how it has helped to reinforce and consecrate this group’s cultural dispositions in relation to US television.

This chapter explores how radio criticism developed during the Second World War and after, from 1939 till 1959. This was a period when radio became the dominant national media, often attracting huge audiences; indeed, the BBC, as the only legal provider of radio at this time, came out of the war with its, and radio’s, reputation enhanced (Williams 2010: 173). The war was a time of great change, socially, culturally and politically, and this led to the BBC to create new popular channels during and after, such as the Light Programme launched in 1945 (Crisell, An Introductory History of British Broadcasting (London: Routledge), 1997: 60–6). However, as will be explored, while radio has a good war, for most newspapers it was a time when, because of the rationing of newsprint, radio coverage declined. After the war radio coverage never fully returned to the amount that was there before, with the returning entertainment pages in the popular papers slowly being dominated by the coverage of television, though the quality papers continued to provide radio coverage alongside that of television.

This volume explores the role of radio criticism in the discourse around radio in Britain from its birth in the 1920s up to present day.

This article analyses how British newspapers in the 1930s created a particular frame or view of radio as an international medium. This frame was created around the idea of a duality, of radio being defined by both national and foreign broadcasts. By analysing coverage provided by the main national newspapers at this time, in relation to their specific radio coverage, such as programme listing and highlights, this paper delineates the form the frame took, what was included and was absent. Such a frame provides an understanding of how the newspapers viewed and valued radio in a period when international broadcasts were seen as an important part of what radio could offer.

This chapter begins by questioning why we need to undertake research on radio critics and what insight this will provide. Then, using work from Anthony Scott (Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth (New York: Penguin), 2006), James Grant (The Critical Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2013), John Corner (JOMEC, 4(Autumn), pp.1–12, http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/jomecjournal , date accessed 2 July 2015, 2013), Smith Maguire and Julian Matthews (European Journal of Cultural Studies 15(5), pp.551–562, 2012), the chapter explores, at a conceptual level, the nature of the critic, the critic's role as a cultural intermediary, the relationship between the critic and the industry they work for and the one they might write about and the wider cultural context they work in. This is then followed by exploring the specific situation of the radio critic, one who works for the national press and writes about the broadcasting industry within a particular dominant culture. This chapter ends by outlining the methodology taken within this work, including how the sample was chosen, the papers looked at and the form taken by the analysis.

This article explores the question of whether we are seeing the end of newspaper-based TV critics as we know them and, if so, what might be taking their place? The first part of this work explores the role of the (TV) critic and raises the question of what might be missed if they disappear. The second part of the article analyses the impact of new forms of digital communication on newspaper-based TV critics and the emergence of new forms of critical debate about television. The article concludes by arguing that the critic still has a role, but a new balance is appearing, one in which the public will play a more important part. 'The TV critic is dead. Long live the TV critic!'

The meaning and cultural standing of a television programme is not predetermined or set. Indeed, it changes over time from before the broadcast of the programme, to when it is shown, and after. Over this period, and beyond, different parties will struggle, negotiate and seek consensus over a programme’s status and reception. In this article I will develop a concept of media engagement in relation to such a process. To help delineate this concept I will focus on how broadcasters, critics and the public in the United Kingdom interacted over ITV’s second series of Broadchurch (2013–17). I will explore how the producers created a publicity image of the programme to position it in popular and critical debates. As I do this I will identify some of the main strategies being followed by media organizations and the related textual and discursive devices utilized in their publicity output to achieve these aims. I will then seek to identify and explore how critics and audiences responded to the broadcaster’s publicity image. However, as I argue, while, with the use of social media, the importance of the public might have increased in such debates, the broadcaster and critic still have a role in framing such discussions and, at least for the critic, in providing a final summation of the public mediated discussion once a programme has finished its run.

This article explores the way British radio critics began to write about radio in the national press during the 1920s and the early 1930s. I will argue that the way radio came to be covered at this time was a result of the way critics were situated in relation to the needs of and interactions between broadcasters, the press and the existing dominant cultural hierarchy of the time. In response to such tensions many critics began to adapt existing forms of coverage associated with theatre, film and book reviewing to this new aural medium, approaches already known to the editors, the public and themselves. Because of this, most critics came to focus on radio programmes as the text to critique and write about, using a form of impressionism. Others, however, began to create a more contextual approach, writing about radio more as a mass medium, created by broadcasting organizations such as the BBC. As this coverage began to appear in the national newspapers it came to play an important role in the way radio became accepted as part of popular culture.

Journalistic discourse, the world over, has developed over time, reflecting changes in the news industry and the wider society. Likewise television criticism, a specific form of journalism, has also had to evolve over time. Initially, as television critics sought recognition and respectability in the quality newspapers, they developed a form of writing similar to the way other forms of culture and art were reviewed. However, as journalists began to develop more popular ways of writing, and with the spread of soft news throughout newspapers and into new magazine supplements, television critics also found themselves having to follow suit. This was such that by the 1970s a number of critics had moved away from trying to mimic other forms of reviewing or criticism to creating their own, more popular form of discourse. In this article I will explore some of the ways the language of critics changed between the 1950s and the 1980s, and how these developments were similar or different to the wider changes in journalism happening at this time.

While television criticism is very popular with readers of newspapers, it has attracted little academic interest, whether as a form of journalistic practice or as part of a critical-public discourse on television. One of the most influential articles on television criticism was published by Mike Poole in 1984, in which he lambasted much of the existing television criticism for approaching television from within a literary-based paradigm, one which he thought was unsuitable for such a medium. Since this article was published, apart from a few articles and chapters, there has been little further attempt to analyse television criticism in the British press in any depth. In this article I argue that, at a time of dramatic changes occurring in the newspapers and television industries, there is a need to develop a better understanding of the form and role of television criticism.