Critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes has announced that it’s planning a change in its certification process in order to bring in a broader range of movie and TV reviews.
Rotten Tomatoes has not pleased many fans, critics, and filmmakers who believe that the current “rotten” or “fresh” system is superficial, often resulting in very harsh scores. It has also been noted that the many of critics that have their work published on the site are from a narrow sample of media outlets.
The site will relax its critic certification process to allow other reviewers who might not be as well known but offer consistent reviews get their views published. In addition, members will be able to use podcasts and video reviews as well as written ones.
Rotten Tomatoes’ critics’ relations manager Jenny Jediny spoke about these new guidelines.
“Over the past few years, our team has added hundreds of new voices to the Tomatometer on top of the thousands we currently have, with the goal of creating a critics pool that closely reflects the global entertainment audience. We took another key step today by revamping our critics’ criteria that both shifts our focus to approving critics individually rather than through publications, and introduces updated guidelines for newer media platforms to be a part of the Tomatometer.”
While it is true that people put far too much stock in RT scores, you must admit that it can be a good tool if you’re just looking for an overall idea of the critical reviews. Our hope is, these updates in policies will result in a better experience for users and contributors.