The Tyranny of Critics
The bottom line is this ... critics have absolutely no power if we, the public, don't give it to them. Complaining about these egomaniacs is misguided because it's ultimately the public who decides if a show survives or fails. Why should any critic have control over our wallets and time? I for one don't read any professional critiques (whether it be for restaurants, movies, theater or fashion) except for an occasional one from the NY Times (which tend to be informative and not merely critical).
The value of professional critiques is based on the belief that critics somehow know what I'd like. That's silly. With the advent of the Internet, they've basically become irrelevant since I can now know what ordinary people think. And with so many non-professional critics (i.e. blogs, YouTube, Amazon.com, NY Times reader comments, etc), I can see which critics most share my views and filter out the rest.
As for Michael Riedel, he writes for the NY Post, so why would anyone expect anything approaching fairness? Like it's Page Six, the paper is all about gossip and personal agendas. Sad to say, Page Six does wield considerable power. And why is that? Simple, we the public give it power.