About Melanie McFarland
Melanie McFarland is the Senior Critic for Salon.com, where she’s written about television, film and popular culture since 2016. Between 2008 and 2015, McFarland served as IMDb's first TV Editor, where she curated television content, served as the approved spokesperson on all things TV-related for the site, and hosted the TV-focused episodes of the site's first original web series "What to Watch."
McFarland is a three-time winner of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for Cultural Criticism, and was named Best TV Critic of 2024 at the L.A. Press Club’s National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards. She was also a 2024 Mirror Awards finalist for best commentary for her longform feature, “A dude and a desk: Why women really don’t get to host late-night TV.”
She served as the president of the Television Critics Association from 2021 through 2023, and has been a member since 2003.
Before working at IMDb, McFarland spent five years as the TV critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. During her time at the P-I, McFarland forged a reputation as one of the country's keenest commentators on television and other media. She served on the board of the George Foster Peabody Awards between 2005 and 2011, and has served on annual awards and nominating juries for the American Film Institute, the Gotham Awards and the Independent Spirit Awards.
She has lent her expert commentary to a variety of media outlets, including CNN, NPR, American Public Media, and the BBC. She’s also a regularly featured contributor on LAist’s AirTalk.
McFarland's work has also appeared in the Seattle Times, where she was a pop culture writer and columnist, as well as RollingStone.com, Vox, the Chicago Tribune, Geekwire, Rotten Tomatoes and Variety. She is based in Seattle, WA.