Restaurants, Culture – Let’s Rate ‘Em All

The Zagat restaurant guide has branched into rating culture in a big way. “For the Zagats, the new surveys offer a chance to satisfy an A-list of recent investors who would like to see revenues keep growing at a time when the restaurant guides have all but blanketed the country. For Broadway, Hollywood and the music world, the new guides could lend statistical proof to the old lament that the public appreciates some work far more than the critics do. For the culture as a whole, the guides are yet another way that public opinion, once it has been measured and disseminated, is now doubling back to influence the public itself.”