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Rotten Tomatoes Creates New Rules that Allow Individual Writers, Podcasters, & Video Reviewers to Join

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Rotten Tomatoes New Rules Allow Individual Writers, Podcasters, Video Reviewers

Rotten Tomatoes has updated its movie and television show TV critics inclusion rules for new media platforms and for writers not associated with a brand name organization. These new platforms include those housing podcasts and video reviews. Because of the rule changes, if you run your own website, blog, podcast, or YouTube channel where you review films or television shows (and you meet the qualifications for each), you can apply to Rotten Tomatoes to be included in their ‘Tomatometer’ as a Tomatometer-approved Critic.

What is Rotten Tomatoes?

Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television.

What is Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer?

The website keeps track of all of the [submitted] reviews…for each film and the percentage of positive reviews is calculated. If the positive reviews make up 60% or more, the film is considered “fresh” [marked by a small icon of a red tomato], in that a supermajority of the reviewers approve of the film. If the positive reviews are less than 60%, the film is considered “rotten” [marked by a small icon of a green splattered tomato].

Why becoming a Tomatometer-approved Critic on Rotten Tomatoes Matters

Visibility – Becoming a movie or television critic featured on Rotten Tomatoes increases your visibility as a critic and the website, podcast, or video platform your reviews are published on.

Validation – Getting approved as a movie or television critic whose reviews are listed and referenced on Rotten Tomatoes, is a mark of validation. It says that your work is good enough to be featured on a internationally-referenced website like Rotten Tomatoes, a site used and visited by millions of people across the world on a monthly basis.

SEO – Rotten Tomatoes not only provides a snippet of your review to their audience, they also provide a back-link to your website or the service page that houses your full review. Having a major website like Rotten Tomatoes back-linking to one or more of your web pages will benefit your website when it comes to search engine optimization, whether the link is do-follow or not do-follow. The back-link will also be a potential source of new web traffic for your website, blog, podcast site, or YouTube Channel. Once the curious read, listen to, or watch your full review on your website, they might stay to read (hear, or watch) more reviews or visit other pages on your site.

Rotten Tomatoes, the Review Landscape, and Changing Times

The move by Rotten Tomatoes to include the voices of critics that do not write or create content for major publications was long over due. There are fantastic writers, podcasters, and video reviewers out there that create deep and thorough reviews for movies and TV shows. Their perspective and insight should be included in Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer. Some organizations are versatile and change quickly with the times while others are rooted in the past. Rotten Tomatoes is the former. Rotten Tomatoes saw the wisdom in changing, they saw that great critics don’t just write reviews for major publications but also for smaller websites, they speak them, and even videotape them for publications that they own.

How to apply to become a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer-approved Critic

Head here, read the criteria, and fill out the online application on Rotten Tomatoes.

Leave your thoughts on Rotten Tomatoes New Rules Allowing New Writers, Podcasters, and Video Reviewers below in the comments section. Want up-to-the-minute notification of newly published articles? ProMovieBlogger publishes articles by Email, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, and Facebook.

About the author

Rollo Tomasi

Rollo Tomasi is a Connecticut-based film critic, TV show critic, news, and editorial writer. He will have a MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University in 2025. Rollo has written over 700 film, TV show, short film, Blu-ray, and 4K-Ultra reviews. His reviews are published in IMDb's External Reviews and in Google News. Previously you could find his work at Empire Movies, Blogcritics, and AltFilmGuide. Now you can find his work at FilmBook, ProMovieBlogger, and TrendingAwards.

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