Key Critic

TV critics suffer professionally from the viewpoint of the goofus bird, which flies backward so it can see where it has been. Unlike reviewers who guide their readers to new plays, movies and books, they can only reminisce about shows that have disappeared into thin air. By finding a way to remedy this built-in defect of the craft, a young (31) New Yorker named Steven H. Scheuer has built up the most widely syndicated TV feature in the U.S. press. His technique: capsule previews of the day's top viewing based on scripts, rehearsals and screenings, which he covers in Manhattan and Hollywood with a five-man staff and half a dozen stringers.

Fattened Ratings. Scheuer, a tall, balding man who never worked for a newspaper until he got his idea, does not write with the authority of New York Times Critic Jack Gould or the readability of the New York Herald Tribune's syndicated (90 papers) John Crosby. But in terms of his effect on which way the dial turns, he is the nation's most influential TV critic. Last week the Tulsa Tribune became the 96th newspaper (total circ. 15 million) to take his TV Key. Among other subscribers: the Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Bulletin, Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Herald & Express, Detroit Times, New York Journal-American. A survey of viewers in Kansas City, where TV Key runs in the Star, estimated recently that a Scheuer boost could fatten a show's Trendex rating by as much as nine points.

Scheuer's service, which began four years ago, includes a bylined column on TV news and gossip, plus a sidedish of questions and answers about television. Three months ago he also blossomed out as a regular morning-after TV critic for New York's Daily Mirror (which runs his previews too). Thus in the case of a single TV show, he sometimes reads the script, attends the dress rehearsal, writes an advance report--and then reviews the finished product on the air.

Isn't Reviewer Scheuer influenced by what Previewer Scheuer has written? "Well, I try to be detached," he says, "and, of course, often the preview has been written by somebody else on my staff." Even with staff help, he can claim the dubious distinction of enduring at least as much television, before and behind the screen, as anybody in the U.S.

Thin Shows. For a man wrapped up in TV, Scheuer holds oddly highbrow credentials. He studied political science at Yale and the London School of Economics, was Broadway co-producer of Christopher Fry's first play in the U.S., 1930's flop. A Phoenix Too Frequent. He learned about TV from the inside as an associate director at CBS. Says he: "I sincerely feel that I'm in a position to help raise television standards." Unfortunately, TV's standards tend to drag down Scheuer's own; simply finding five or six shows to recommend each day means including some very doubtful ones. On some days prospects look so thin that TV Key simply advises: "This is the right evening to catch up with a good book or a good movie."

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