Can You Give a TV Critics Tour Without TV Critics?

For long-time TV critics as well as network PR types, there's a kind of malaise hanging over the current TV Critics Assn. tour. Staff cutbacks at newspapers, coupled with a generally grim economy, have made the winter tour feel especially useless, inviting questions as to whether networks will seek to reduce costs by retrenching to a single summer session.

There are arguments to be made on both sides. The crush of new programming being launched throughout the year certainly can support a second event to go with the summer one, just in terms of product that various networks want to promote. Yet whether that requires a full-blown tour -- as opposed to conference calls and the like -- is open to debate, especially when studios are counting every penny.

As for the journalists sequestered in Universal City, the room remains full for the question-and-answer sessions, but a lot of us who have attended for years (myself sparingly, inasmuch as I'm based in Los Angeles) are looking around the room with quizzical expressions. We don't recognize half the people there, or who (usually as in what web site) they write for. Moreover, some of the critics still on hand have been down-sized by their papers, prompting additional confusion as to their attendance that only adds to the sense of depression.

Executives, meanwhile, appear to be keeping a lower profile, less interested in publicly addressing reporters than throwing their talent out before the assembled whatever-they-are and hoping somebody will be inspired to write/blog about it. The cost efficiencies of that are beyond my understanding, but I suspect those numbers are being crunched even as we speak.

For now, the press tour continues, with Fox Entertainment Prez Kevin Reilly at least vouching for its utility during that network's presentation day. Still, as of right now it all feels a little bit like "The Sixth Sense." Sure, there's a room full of people, but they're either ignoring or don't seem to realize that the TCA as we once knew it is already dead.