When I wrote about The (Non) Influence of the TV Critic, I was relaying a panel discussion about whether critics have the power to make or break a show, and whether they even should. As far as my opinion went, I was questioning their focus, not their existence.

On Thursday, Variety printed an article about the diminishing ranks of TV critics at newspapers across the United States. The article, titled "Out with the old, in with... nobody: Newspapers phasing out veteran critics," enumerates the TV reporters and critics who have been phased out, replaced by wire service copy or nothing at all.

Time's James Poniewozik hesitantly picked up on the Variety article and points out there hasn't been much discussion, maybe because of the awkwardness of critics writing about the threat to their jobs. There's no way for them to do it without being self-serving and therefore not terribly credible. But I'm a blogger, one of the mass of amateur voices accused of helping to supplant professional critics, so I've got nothing at stake when I say it's shortsighted at best for newspapers to eliminate local TV critics.

I think we're further down that road in Canada than the Americans are. We have national TV columnists at the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and Macleans magazine, and unique voices at the Toronto Star, with Vinay Menon, Jim Bawden, and Rob Salem covering the TV beat, and at the Vancouver Province with Dana Gee, whose online columns are, unfortunately, generally behind a subscription firewall.

But CanWest News Services, Sun Media and the Canadian Press supply the majority of television coverage here, which means I can pick up the Vancouver Sun and get the same coverage as I'd get in the Calgary Herald or the Edmonton Journal. Alex Strachan is a fine writer, but he's one man with one opinion on any given topic. I didn't even realize he was based in Vancouver until I looked up that hyperlink.

Besides that, most of what I can find in my local papers — Gee usually excepted — I can find online, along with much, much more of the same, of varying qualities and varying opinions but all filling the same role, because it's all meant for a mass audience.

Even our niche papers, the alternative arts and entertainment weeklies like the Georgia Straight, don't cover TV with anywhere near the same frequency or devotion as they cover film, music, theatre, visual arts, dance, food, books, fashion, politics, good grief, even crafts and sex shops get more coverage. I might as well call them the "arts and entertainment except television" papers.