The Irrelevance Of Rotten Tomatoes Scores When It Comes To TV Shows
In the past month, TV shows like "Succession," "Sharp Objects" and "Castle Rock" have bled into my Twitter feeds and my conversations with friends. They're the shows currently on my radar because of tweets like this and endorsements from my coworkers, one of whom summed up "Succession" pithily and brilliantly as "'Game of Thrones' crossed with 'Billions' crossed with 'Veep'/'In The Loop.'" If the people around me want to sell me on a TV show, they might talk about the IP, the big-name actors attached to the project, the story's crazy plot twists and the show's similarities to other popular programming. What has never happened, however, is them advocating for the show by citing, say, the show's high scores on Rotten Tomatoes.
Why is that? Why do we never utter sentences like "'Cobra Kai' has been certified 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes?" or "'Stranger Things" was rated 8.9 out of 10 on IMDb"? It's not because the reviews of TV shows aren't aggregated by these websites — they are. Contrary to what you might think of IMDb, given that its name is Internet Movie Database, TV shows also occupy an essential, if relatively smaller, place than movies there. And the same thing goes for Rotten Tomatoes.
So if the lack of availability of TV rating sites isn't the issue, why is it that we hardly use critical or audience scores as a way to measure the quality of a TV show to our peers? Here are a few of my theories:
There Are Too Many Good Shows Out There
It's an odd dilemma to have, but it's true that when it comes to TV shows, there are so many high-quality programs for us to consume. People have been talking about Peak TV for a few years now, and a quick scroll through Rotten Tomatoes' website would seem to confirm that we've been offered an embarrassment of riches. While the scores of movies that will open soon or are currently in theaters now are much more uneven on the reviews website — four out of the 14 movies shown on the front page received a "Rotten" rating, which means that they got a score that 60 or lower — the scores of TV shows are far more sanguine. Out of the 13 TV shows currently spotlighted on the front page, only Netflix's critically-panned "Insatiable" has received a "Rotten" rating. All of the other shows, from "Sinner" to "Castle Rock," hold a score that's 80 or higher.
The same also applies to other review aggregate websites such as Metacritic and IMDb. The Metacritic scores of the latest 10 TV shows listed is currently, on average, higher than the latest movies. And for IMDb, the average score of the top 10 most popular movies in 2018, which comes down to 7.11, is still slightly lower than the average score of the top 10 most popular TV shows that debuted this year — 7.521.
So maybe the reason why critical scores matter less when it comes to TV shows is that… TV has become too good? While the quality of movies can still be very hit-or-miss, as evidenced by the varied scores of movies on different review websites, the caliber of TV shows is, by contrast, consistently high nowadays. And when there's so much high-quality content out there, critical scores might begin to lose its relevance. If you have dozens of television shows that are all hitting the high marks of 80 and above on Rotten Tomatoes, does it really matter that one of them was rated 90 and the other 83?
The Price Of Admission Is Higher For Movies
Another reason why viewers might care less about a TV show's critical scores than a film's might be the high price of moviegoing. Tickets in metropolitan areas in the US can be extremely expensive, costing up to $25.49 if you're going for an IMAX screening in New York City unless you're subscribed to a service like Moviepass or AMC's new subscription program. And even if you don't live in a pricey city like New York or Los Angeles, the average price of a movie ticket for North America is currently $9.16, only a hair less expensive than a Standard Netflix subscription, which costs $10.99 per month and offers you thousands of movie and TV titles.
When you're spending that much money to see a movie in theaters, it would make sense that a movie's critical reception might matter to you as a consumer. On the other hand, as a viewer, a TV show's score on Rotten Tomatoes or TV.com might matter less to you because it's less costly to watch television programming than to go out and see a movie. Monthly subscription fees of streaming platforms such as Netflix and Hulu typically don't exceed $12 dollars, and even cable networks like HBO has rolled out HBO Now, a streaming service that costs $14.99 a month, a drastic drop from cable package costs. While you might pause and consider whether or not a movie is worth seeing in theaters because of the price and the fact that if the movie sucks, you would have wasted a not-insignificant amount of money and two hours of your time, the same doesn't necessarily apply to TV subscriptions, which are cheaper and include a whole host of programming, not just one single make-or-break show.
Networks And Platforms Market Emmys More Than Critical Scores
Compared to critical scores on review websites, networks and platforms seem to place more stock on the Emmys when it comes to the marketing of TV shows. Despite the fact that the Emmy, arguably the best TV award, might not offer shows as big of a ratings boost as it did decades ago, the awards still play a crucial part in helping create social buzz around television shows, especially for shows with smaller audiences. It has also become an arena where streaming platforms can challenge and, in the case of this year's Emmys, trounce their competitors in cable and broadcast television. For streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu, who are relatively new to the TV game, snagging an Emmy not only may help increase the exposure and viewership of their shows, but it also confers them a sense of legitimacy and recognition in the TV industry. Five years ago, Netflix broke into the awards with their first big prestige show, "House of Cards." In 2015, Amazon scooped up its first Emmy with "Transparent," and last year, Hulu did it with "The Handmaid's Tale."
Awards, rather than critical scores, seem to be the preferred indicator for networks and platforms when it comes to signaling the quality of a show to viewers. That's not to say TV studios or networks don't care about the scores of their shows on sites like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, because, as Quentin Schaffer, the Executive Vice President of Corporate Communications at HBO, explained to me in an email, they do. Critical scores and reviews are considered, he explains, along with criteria such as awards recognition in the network's evaluation of a series' success. If a show has a small audience but has gained great critical acclaim or buzz, the show might still be considered for renewal.
However, in terms of the marketing of TV series, it's indisputable that awards are more frequently evoked than scores on reviews aggregate sites. The season 2 trailer for "The Handmaid's Tale," for example, includes its Emmys and Golden Globes credentials. So does the trailer for the latest season of "Transparent," which characterizes the show as "Amazon's Most Award-Winning Original." And while Amazon shows you information such as Amazon user ratings, IMDb scores2 and its awards laurels when you click on the pages of individual titles, Emmys is still the most spotlighted criterion in a show's promotion on the Amazon Video page. Not only are shows like "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," which received 14 nominations this year, marked as "Emmy Nominated," but there's a whole row that's dedicated to Emmy nominated and winning series alone.
So why don't TV studios and distributors cite critical scores more in their marketing of television shows? You can argue that the Emmys, which are only awarded to a handful of shows each year, might be a more useful signal of pedigree than critical scores since TV shows these days are, on average, pretty good, but the absence still seems especially glaring when you think about the high frequency at which a movie's Rotten Tomatoes score is alluded to in the publicity and discussion of recent movies. Last year's "Lady Bird," for instance, gained much press for being the best-reviewed movie on Rotten Tomatoes and while news media were reporting on "Black Panther's" box office achievements, they were also paying close attention to its high Rotten Tomatoes scores. People also notice when a movie gets an abysmally low score on Rotten Tomatoes, such was the case for movies like this year's "Gotti" and last year's "The Emoji Movie".
But maybe that has more to do with the meteoric rise of Rotten Tomatoes as a gauge to judge a movie's merit in these past few years. The review aggregate site was launched twenty years ago, but really caught the attention and scrutiny of both the media and the movie industry after its acquisition by ticketing site Fandango in 2016. Many have argued over whether or not a movie's Rotten Tomatoes score affects its box office revenues since a film's Rotten Tomatoes score is displayed prominently on Fandango when moviegoers purchase tickets. While there still isn't unanimous consensus on the review site's impact or lack thereof on ticket sales, what is less disputed is the fact that people love criticizing Rotten Tomatoes and the website's existence has only grown thornier. Some box office analysts hate it. Directors like Martin Scorsese have spoken out against it. And Hollywood studios definitely have a love-hate relationship with it — they are inclined to include Rotten Tomatoes scores in their promotion of movies when the scores are positive, but when the scores are negative and their movies tank at the box office, they target their ire at the site.
So perhaps it's not so much that TV studios and audiences don't care about scores or ratings compared to their movie counterparts. Maybe it's the other way around and it's just that we've been paying a lot more attention to movies' Rotten Tomatoes scores recently because of its ready availability on transactional platforms like Fandango and AMC Cinemas and its frequent appearances in press surrounding movies, be that negative or positive.
If Not Scores, What Do We Depend On For Our TV Consumption?
With so much TV out there — last year alone saw the airing of nearly 500 new original shows — what do we rely on for our TV show recommendations, if not scores on Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb?
Strong word-of-mouth and buzz are probably what sets apart the you-absolutely-have-to-watch-this shows from the good-but-not-buzzy-enough shows in the era of Peak TV, where we're facing an overwhelming overload of television programming. TV watching has historically been a communal experience, and the shows that are able to break through the noise are ones like "Stranger Things" and "Game of Thrones," shows that have crossed over from being a mere TV series to an interwoven part of the fabric of popular culture. They are the shows that keep on popping up on your social media and the shows that your friends and coworkers are asking you whether you've seen as conversational openers.
Aside from personal recommendations and social buzz, the platform from which you watch or stream TV programming may also play a pivotal role in deciding the next show you might see. If you have Netflix, you might go on to watch one of the programs the streaming platform pushes to you based on your viewing history and preferences. You might opt to give a few shows a try after Netflix recommends them to you as programs you might be interested in. Maybe, if you're a more conscientious person that values her time, you might Google a few reviews to see whether or not the shows are actually good. But I highly doubt that that the shows' high Rotten Tomatoes ratings will be the deciding vote that determines whether or not you're going to watch a show to completion.
The fundamental differences between watching a movie and watching a TV show may be another reason why critical scores matter more for one activity and less for the other. Given the nature of TV-watching and how time-consuming it can be, who's going to agree to commit hundreds of hours to watching a program that's an ill fit for them just because it has a high rating? I might give a TV show a few hours of my time if there's good word-of-mouth and if it's crowned "the best show on TV right now," but it's hard to imagine expending more time than that on a critically-acclaimed series I'm only tepidly excited about when there's so much content out there that may be just as good or better.
Moviegoing may demand a higher price of admission, but with TV, the demand is on one's time. That's a demand that television programming can't ask consumers to commit to if its only selling point is a high critical score.