What do reviewers actually review?

On “Television Criticism”: The Pursuit of the Critical Examination of a Popular Art

“…Rather than the sociological traditions used to study the previously mentioned art forms, scholars in the developing field of communication took different foci and applied disparate theories in their examinations of critics and their writings in the 1950s and 1960s. Studies often focused on calls to the profession regarding the practice of criticism (Kreiling, 1966-67;Magnus, 1966-67;McGrath & Nance, 1966-67;Steinberg, 1974), surveys of the characteristics of certain columnists (Lichty, 1963;Mayeux, 1969Mayeux, -1970Rossman, 1965;Young, 1966-67), surveys of the critical characteristics of certain publications (Shelby, 1966-67); or assessments of the effect or importance of criticism (Rossman, 1975;Shelby, 1973). These studies predominantly used textual analysis of critics' columns rather than the more sociological methods and theories common to the "production of culture" assessments of other critical traditions.…”