I admittedly need some help researching for a project I’m working on. I’ve been searching trade magazines (Variety, Hollywood Reporter) and other periodicals (NY Times, LA Times, Time, Life, etc.), but the former only seem to write about movies and the latter don’t seem to do TV reviews at all. Where were all the critics back then? Are there any other trade magazines I just don’t know about?
It’s possible I simply haven’t been looking hard enough, but it’s tough to sift through countless newspaper articles, many of which are just TV listings for some random week in 1955. So…any advice?
It seems too obvious, but have you tried TV Guide (although I have no idea if the archives are even available that far back)? Also, I searched the New York Times archives for articles on “I Love Lucy” and found several that appeared to be reviews (such as “Television in Review; What Has Happened to ‘I Love Lucy’ Show? Sight Gag Superseding Witty Dialogue” from March 31, 1954).
Sorry to double-post, but I did another search of the Times archives from January 1, 1950 through December 31, 1960 for articles with “Television in Review” in the title and found 319 results.
Yeah TV Guide would be a big help, but unfortunately I don’t have any of their older issues available to me. It’s funny you mention Lucy, as I was doing a search on that show earlier tonight.
TV Guide, then owned by Annenberg (who originally made his money with the Racing Form), was the highest circulation magazine at the time. There has to be access to the archives. If not, then the most significant record of American culture has been lost.
Look harder. The weekly Variety has been doing regular television reviews since the 1940s, devoting about a page to them in each issue. There were so many that in the 1980s they published a multi-volume (and still going) anthology of all of the reviews. Here, for example, is Volume 17, 1991-1992.
Likewise, the New York Times has been doing regular reviews of television shows since the 1940s. I know, I’ve looked up many of them. All can be viewed online at a library that subscribes to ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
John Crosby was the radio/tv reviewer for the New York Herald-Tribune. He did a collection of his columns in 1952, Out of the Blue. (He also did With love and loathing but that appears to be a wider selection of columns from 1963.)
OK, I looked harder. It turns out Time actually does have a decent amount of TV coverage, plus the NY Times has shown to be useful. I’ll definitely have to check out Variety too. Thanks for the help, everyone.