New Patterns in Global Television Formats

Karina Aveyard

Description

The past twenty years have seen major changes in the ways that television formats and programming are developed and replicated internationally for different markets – with locally focused repackagings of hit reality shows leading the way. But in a sense, that’s not new: TV formats have been being exported for decades, with the approach and methods changing along with changes in broadcast technology, markets, government involvement and audience interest. This book brings together scholars of TV formats from around the world to analyse and discuss those changes and offer an up-to-the-minute analysis of the current state of TV formats and their use and adaptation worldwide.

 

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Toby Miller

Introduction: A Changing Format Mosaic

Karina Aveyard, Pia Majbritt Jensen and Albert Moran

Part 1: Overviews

Chapter 1: Television Format as a Transnational Production Model

Mats Nylund

Chapter 2: The Hybrid Status of Global Television Formats

Claudio Coletta

Chapter 3: Formatting Reality: On Reality Television as a Format, a Genre and a Meta-Genre

Daniel Biltereyst and Lennart Soberon

Chapter 4: Seventy Years in the Making: The Advent of the Transnational Television Format Trading System

Jean K. Chalaby

Part 2: History

Chapter 5: Medea’s Children: The Italian Version of The War of the Worlds

Milly Buonanno

Chapter 6: Cultural Negotiation in an Early Programme Format: The Finnish Adaptation of Romper Room

Heidi Keinonen

Chapter 7: Song Contests in Europe during the Cold War

Yulia Yurtaeva and Lothar Mikos

Chapter 8: “Do It, but Do It Dancing!”: Television and Format Adaptations in Colombia in the 1980s and Early 1990s

Hernan David Espinosa‑Medina and Enrique Uribe‑Jongbloed

Part 3: Industry Players, Big and Small

Chapter 9: From Marginal Trader to Corporate Giant: The Emergence of FremantleMedia

Albert Moran and Karina Aveyard

Chapter 10: Formats and Localization in the Children’s Audiovisual Sector

Jeanette Steemers

Chapter 11: Wallander at the BBC: Trading Fiction Formats and Producing Culture for UK Public Service Broadcasting in the Contemporary Age

Janet McCabe

Chapter 12: Television Formats as Media Ritual Work Practices: Discourses of Freedom, Nationalism and Good Neighbours

Tiina Räisä

Part 4: Territories and Markets

Chapter 13: The Social Contexts of Format Adaptation: Remaking Formats to Fit in China

Michael Keane and Coco Ma

Chapter 14: The Political Economy of Television Formats in Africa: The Case of Big Brother and Idols

Martin Nkosi Ndlela

Chapter 15: Global Reality Television and the Concept of Recursion: Idols in African Contexts

Tess Conner

Chapter 16: Decentring Innovation: The Israeli Television Industry and the Format-driven Transnational Turn in Content Development

Sharon Shahaf

Part 5: Producers and Audiences

Chapter 17: Take a Look at the Lawman: Interrogating Critical Responses to the US Version of Life on Mars

Christopher Hogg

Chapter 18: Sense of Place: Producers and Audiences of International Drama Format at The Bridge

Annette Hill

Chapter 19: The Duality of Banal Transnationalism and Banal Nationalism: Television Audiences and the Musical Talent Competition Genre

Andrea Esser, Pia Majbritt Jensen, Heidi Keinonen and Anna Maria Lemor

Chapter 20: The Voice of Queer Italy: The Politics of the the Representation of GLBTQI (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersexual) Characters in Italian Talent Shows and Their Reception in Online Discussions

Elisa Giomi and Marta Perrotta

About the Contributors

Index

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Arts visuels
• Media
• Télévision
• Film
• ART
• Radio
• General
• Television
• General officer

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 08 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783207145
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2016 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2016 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2016 Intellect Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Production editor: Tim Mitchell
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-712-1
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-713-8
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-714-5
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
This is a peer-reviewed publication.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Toby Miller
Introduction: A Changing Format Mosaic
Karina Aveyard, Pia Majbritt Jensen and Albert Moran
Part 1: Overviews
Chapter 1: Television Format as a Transnational Production Model
Mats Nylund
Chapter 2: The Hybrid Status of Global Television Formats
Claudio Coletta
Chapter 3: Formatting Reality: On Reality Television as a Format, a Genre and a Meta-Genre
Daniel Biltereyst and Lennart Soberon
Chapter 4: Seventy Years in the Making: The Advent of the Transnational Television Format Trading System
Jean K. Chalaby
Part 2: History
Chapter 5: Medea’s Children: The Italian Version of The War of the Worlds
Milly Buonanno
Chapter 6: Cultural Negotiation in an Early Programme Format: The Finnish Adaptation of Romper Room
Heidi Keinonen
Chapter 7: Song Contests in Europe during the Cold War
Yulia Yurtaeva and Lothar Mikos
Chapter 8: “Do It, but Do It Dancing!”: Television and Format Adaptations in Colombia in the 1980s and Early 1990s
Hernan David Espinosa-Medina and Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed
Part 3: Industry Players, Big and Small
Chapter 9: From Marginal Trader to Corporate Giant: The Emergence of FremantleMedia
Albert Moran and Karina Aveyard
Chapter 10: Formats and Localization in the Children’s Audiovisual Sector
Jeanette Steemers
Chapter 11: Wallander at the BBC: Trading Fiction Formats and Producing Culture for UK Public Service Broadcasting in the Contemporary Age
Janet McCabe
Chapter 12: Television Formats as Media Ritual Work Practices: Discourses of Freedom, Nationalism and Good Neighbours
Tiina Räisä
Part 4: Territories and Markets
Chapter 13: The Social Contexts of Format Adaptation: Remaking Formats to Fit in China
Michael Keane and Coco Ma
Chapter 14: The Political Economy of Television Formats in Africa: The Case of Big Brother and Idols
Martin Nkosi Ndlela
Chapter 15: Global Reality Television and the Concept of Recursion: Idols in African Contexts
Tess Conner
Chapter 16: Decentring Innovation: The Israeli Television Industry and the Format-driven Transnational Turn in Content Development
Sharon Shahaf
Part 5: Producers and Audiences
Chapter 17: Take a Look at the Lawman: Interrogating Critical Responses to the US Version of Life on Mars
Christopher Hogg
Chapter 18: Sense of Place: Producers and Audiences of International Drama Format The Bridge
Annette Hill
Chapter 19: The Duality of Banal Transnationalism and Banal Nationalism: Television Audiences and the Musical Talent Competition Genre
Andrea Esser, Pia Majbritt Jensen, Heidi Keinonen and Anna Maria Lemor
Chapter 20: The Voice of Queer Italy: The Politics of the the Representation of GLBTQI (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersexual) Characters in Italian Talent Shows and Their Reception in Online Discussions
Elisa Giomi and Marta Perrotta
About the Contributors
Index
Acknowledgements
Our warm thanks to all of the chapter authors for supporting this project and for their highly innovative and engaging contributions. We are also very grateful to Toby Miller for his thoughtful Foreword. A number of very busy people also rallied around the project by reviewing contributions and we would like to express our sincere thanks to the following:
Associate Professor Hanne Bruun (Aarhus University)
Dr. Elizabeth Davies (Griffith University)
Associate Professor Susanne Eichner (Aarhus University)
Associate Professor Kirsten Frandsen (Aarhus University)
Dr. Bill Grantham (Los Angeles)
Dr. Noel King (formerly Macquarie University)
Dr. Anthony May (Griffith University)
Professor Michael Meadows (Griffith University)
Professor Sue Turnbull (University of Wollongong)
Associate Professor Anne Marit Waade (Aarhus University)
Lesley Wilson (Griffith University)
The book is indebted to the School of Art, Media and American studies at the University of East Anglia, the Department of Media Studies and Journalism at Aarhus University and the School of Humanities at Griffith University for the backing that they have provided. Our loved ones were also involved in the project giving us the time and space to help bring it to fruition. We would particularly like to thank Enrico, Peter and Noela for this support. Albert is also grateful to Aarhus University’s Department of Media Studies and Journalism for hosting a research visit in November 2013 and for helping to facilitate an online television format symposium.
Finally at Intellect, we are most grateful to Tim Mitchell who was so helpful through all the different stages of the process.
Foreword
Toby Miller
We live in times when viewers are said to be truly sovereign, holding sway over the culture industries in a cosmic reversal of roles. Interpellated and enabled by new technological forms, deregulated media systems and a bursting surge of creativity emerging from their sinews and veins, today’s audience members are hard to please, impossible to tie down and unsatisfied with industrial-style treatment. The historic captains of consciousness – states and corporations – are supposedly challenged by newly awakened and empowered sovereign consumers.
Well, maybe.
Television formats represent arguments both in favour of and against this conceit.
On the one hand, they show that people want programmes that speak to them culturally, especially in terms of language and accent. Formats provide alternatives to the simple importation of cheap popular texts from major producers of TV, such as the United States or former colonial powers.
On the other hand, they represent a formulaic approach to television, drawing on the desire to innovate as little as possible and repeat as much as feasible. They are the ultimate in a seeming customization that provides culture-industry workers with unoriginal labour that is factory-like in its largely mimetic localization of texts originating elsewhere.
As TV moves uncertainly from full-service broadcasting to niche cable, from omnibus stations to thematic ones, from universal service to targeted viewing, from regulated public interest to unregulated capital, from a box in your corner to a space on your wall to your phone and finally to your wrist, it has to rely on some old standards. One of these is the format, whether we call it a game show, a talent quest or, for some bizarre reason, “reality”.
The format arches back, back, back in history and works well in many different national contexts, as this impressive collection indicates. It can provide startling pleasures and even a sense of counter-flow, as per Yo soy Betty, la fea moving from Colombia to the Global North.
But is it a defensive tool in the face of technological and regulatory change – a product of carefully industrial cost control in difficult times – rather than a symptom of audience power?
I was left entirely and almost pleasurably uncertain how to answer this question after reading through the book you now hold in your hands. The editors have done a marvellous job in recruiting emerging and established scholars alike, and doing so in a truly international way. The authors are alert to issues of production, meaning and reception alike, as we have a right to expect of today’s television studies. Bravo.
Introduction
A Changing Format Mosaic
Karina Aveyard, Pia Majbritt Jensen and Albert Moran
P hone a friend and tell them that you are interested in TV formats! There is likely to be reserve, puzzlement, polite silence until you offer examples of formats that they may know. Maybe The Batchelor, The X Factor or The Voice ? “Of course!” says the friend. We are on the same wavelength – or are we?
This kind of move – to illustrate by example rather than explain by definition – reminds us that formats are familiar, everyday, widely understood and shared entities even if their label is a little obscure. But the fact remains that the ubiquity of TV formats is overwhelmingly familiar and continuous, helping to construct public narrative, celebrity and consumer culture from one end of the global television world to the other. TV formats are the driving force that mould together media companies, producers, television industries, performers, stars, executives, distributors, advertisers, merchandisers, audiences, fans and so on into a single, multifarious communion. Being a realm of circulation and mobility, TV formats have little need for definition or explanation so far as this public world is concerned.
Even so, there is a need to push back against this familiarity to bring a more critical light to bear on the phenomenon and meaning of formats. What is a format? Where has the practice of format adaptation come from? When did this happen? Why has it come about and how does it continue? These general questions provide the framework and motivation for the chapters that are collected in this volume. None of the answers are simple or stand-alone, but are instead part of a critical discourse having to do with media and communications in the present. Still, the “what” question does warrant an answer of sorts, not least to kick-start our volume.