scholarly journals The showrunner’s skills and responsibilities in the creation and production process of fiction series in the contemporary North American television industry

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
María-José Higueras-Ruiz ◽  
Francisco-Javier Gómez-Pérez ◽  
Jordi Alberich-Pascual
Keyword(s):  
Production Process ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Series Production ◽  
Television Industry ◽  
Production Studies ◽  
Channel Characteristics ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Television Market ◽  
Industrial Context

Contemporary fiction TV series production in North America is characterized by the showrunner figure’s importance. This paper aims to study the concept of “showrunner” as executive-creative producer, analyze the competencies and responsibilities carried out by them during the production process of TV shows according to personal and professional factors, and examine their position within the current television market. For this purpose, a literature review on fiction TV series production and television authorship has been conducted. After this, adopting the focus of media production studies, a qualitative methodology based on in-depth personal interviews has been used, which was carried out with a selection of thirty-six significant executive producers and writers of contemporary American TV series. The findings indicate the relevance of this profile from a historical perspective, and particularly in recent years. Although there is a basic scheme of tasks developed by the showrunner in each phase of the production process, we find differences in this actuation due to personal –sex and nationality– and professional –format/gender and channel– characteristics in this industrial context. The showrunner develops an executive-creative dual profile to maintain the project’s coherence according to the established vision. Their influence over the TV series’ creative features contributes to reflection on television authorship and its attribution to this figure.

Ready-made TV shows and the role of acquisitions: Investigating some mediations of the Italian and global television industry

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Barra
Keyword(s):  
Original Research ◽  
Television Industry ◽  
Production Studies ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Global Television ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Over The Top ◽  
Depth Interviews

The acquisition phase has progressively gained a crucial relevance in contemporary television industries. Building on an original research in the field of media production studies, with in-depth interviews of Italian professionals and longitudinal comparisons across the last decade, this article traces the role of acquisitions in the global distribution and national circulation of TV content and synthetizes recent developments in production routines and professional cultures. The goal is to explore this understudied sector, its practitioners and best practices, as well as to highlight the impact of digital TV multichannel and supra-national over-the-top (OTT) players, which have changed these dynamics further.

Mod Pop Methods

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-88
Author(s):  
Quinlan Miller
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Trans Content ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Television Industry ◽  
Production Studies ◽  
Feminist Media Studies ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Gender Regulation

This article reconstructs queer popular culture as a way of exploring media production studies as a trans history project. It argues that queer and trans insights into gender are indispensible to feminist media studies. The article looks at The Ugliest Girl in Town series (ABC, 1968–69), a satire amplifying a purported real-life fad in flat chests, short haircuts, and mod wigs, to restore texture to the everyday landscape of popular entertainment. Approaching camp as a genderqueer practice, the article presents the program as one of many indications of simultaneously queer and trans representation in the new media moment of the late 1960s. Behind-the-scenes visions of excavated archival research inform an analysis of the series as a feminist text over and against its trans misogyny, which evaluates and ranks women based on their looks, bodies, and appearance while excessively sexualizing and even more stringently appraising, policing, and punishing trans women, women perceived to be trans, and oppositional forms of femininity. The program captures both the means of gender regulation and detachment from it, the experience of gender embodiment, and the promise of presenting and being perceived as many genders. Ugly is an awful word in the way it is usually wielded, but it can be reclaimed. Examining this rarely cited and often misconstrued Screen Gems series helps to demonstrate a more equitable distribution of creative credit for queer trans content across the television industry and the subcultures it commodified in the 1960s.

scholarly journals Teasing apart television industry disruption: consequences of meso-level financing practices before and after the US multiplatform era

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (7) ◽  
pp. 923-938 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda D Lotz
Keyword(s):  
Series Production ◽  
Television Industry ◽  
Meso Level ◽  
Revenue Sources ◽  
Revenue Model ◽  
The Us ◽  
Before And After

The emergence of Internet-distributed television services such as Netflix has led viewers and legacy television companies to rethink the norms of television. Internet distribution is often presumed as the source of Netflix’s market differentiation, but the contemporary competitive field has simultaneously been adjusted by shifts in revenue model and ownership regulations. This article examines the multiple shifts in the US television industry to illustrate how adjustments in the underlying financing practices of series production and revenue sources also structure the multiplatform environment. Distribution technology is not reshaping the boundaries and norms of television texts and industries alone, but adjustments to industrial practices such as financing must also be examined. Comparison of the financing practices of subscriber-funded, linear, HBO, and nonlinear Netflix ground the analysis.

From ‘secret’ online teen drama to international cult phenomenon: The global expansion of SKAM and its public service mission

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vilde Schanke Sundet
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Television Industry ◽  
Global Expansion ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Production Studies ◽  
Transmedia Storytelling ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
Service Mission

This article addresses the production, distribution and global expansion of the online teen drama, SKAM/SHAME (2015–2017), produced by the Norwegian public service broadcaster NRK. The article combines perspectives on transmedia storytelling with production studies and studies of public service broadcasting to investigate the distinct production, publishing and promotion models underpinning SKAM, as well as its public service mission. Furthermore, it addresses SKAM’s transition from a ‘secret’ online teen drama targeting young Norwegians in season one to a global cult phenomenon with viewers and fans in all age groups and on all continents in seasons three and four, and relates this expansion to recent shifts within the television industry.

scholarly journals New Bottles for New Wine: Sociology and Technology of Today’s Television Industry

1970 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent O'Donnell
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Television Industry ◽  
Production Studies

A review of Vicki Mayer, Below the Line: Producers and production studies in the new television economy (Duke, 2011) and James Bennett and Niki Strange (eds), Television as Digital Media (Duke, 2011).

Television in Flux

2012 ◽  
pp. 378-391
Author(s):  
Steven S. Wildman ◽  
Han Ei Chew
Keyword(s):  
Service Providers ◽  
Distribution Channel ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Television Industry ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Video Distribution ◽  
Television Service ◽  
Television Market ◽  
New Distribution

The television landscape is in a state of flux. In this new environment, profit-driven media companies have to balance tradeoffs between traditional and new channels of video distribution to optimize returns on their investments in content generation. This chapter describes the challenges traditional television service providers face in adapting their strategies to an environment in which the internet is playing an increasingly prominent role as a new distribution channel. In the short to intermediate run there is the challenge of finding ways to monetize an internet audience without cannibalizing profits earned through traditional distribution channels. The longer-term challenge is adapting to a distribution technology that embeds a fundamentally different economic logic for video market organization. In this chapter, we describe and analyze current trends in the internet television market and traditional television industry players’ efforts to respond to the opportunities and threats posed by internet distribution.

The Cosmopolitan Dream

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Reality Tv ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Chinese Men ◽  
The Us ◽  
Chinese Entrepreneurs ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Chinese Masculinity ◽  
Gay Identities

What does it mean to be a mainland Chinese man in a transcultural world? What resources do mainland Chinese men utilise to perform a masculinity that is both Chinese and cosmopolitan? This volume demonstrates that the newly emerging formations of mainland Chinese masculinity, whether located in China or overseas, can only be fully understood through attending to the transnational dimensions of their construction. This volume maps multiple instantiations of the 'transnational turn' in Chinese masculinities, including portrayals of the transnational business masculinity of globe-trotting Chinese businessmen in Chinese and German TV dramas, transcultural models of caring fatherhood in Chinese reality TV shows, the transnational journeys of young Chinese entrepreneurs in search of a sense of cultural identity in Chinese blockbuster movies, filmic portrayals of Chinese gay identities ‘haunted’ by premodern masculine models, the integration of sexually liberated Western masculinities and historical caizi images in contemporary fiction, the culinary masculinity of cosmopolitan Chinese TV chefs, the representation of Chinese masculinities in Japan and in online Chinese-language forums in the US, the effect of migration to Africa on Chinese fathering subjectivities, and Chinese fathers' involvement in the growing transnational phenomenon of 'birth tourism' in California.

Fandomization of online video or television in China

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (7) ◽  
pp. 995-1010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony YH Fung
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
Online Video ◽  
Video Content ◽  
Television Industry ◽  
Television Production ◽  
Production Company ◽  
Television Market

In this article, I explain a new media ecology for online television in which the online audience or fans and their participation play a stronger role in swaying the online video content or production. I call it fandomization of online television. Dependent on the number of online users and the viewership, online television platforms have to produce programs that align with the fans’ discourse and emotions to maximize their viewership. This results in a fan-discourse-led production, as in the case of China’s huge online video or television market. Based on my study of the top online television production company, Tencent Video, and its top television program, as well as ethnographic observations of their productions, I illustrate how Tencent Video manages fans by establishing a fan-based platform that works in tandem with its television platform. The dual television and fan-based platform of the television industry forms an interlocking web of the network of fans, their idols, and social media, with the consequences that social and political public discourse are highly synchronized in China’s extremely controlled Internet.

scholarly journals Digital Media Platforms and the Use of TV Content: Binge Watching and Video-on-Demand in Germany

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 154-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lothar Mikos
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Video On Demand ◽  
Carrier Medium ◽  
Audience Studies ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
The Future ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Television Market

The advancing digitalization and media convergence demands TV broadcasting companies to adjust their content to various platforms and distribution channels. The internet, as convergent carrier medium, is increasingly taking on a central role for additional media. Classical linear TV is still important, but for some audiences it has been developing from a primary medium to a secondary medium. Owing to the growing melding of classical-linear TV contents with online offerings (e.g. video-on-demand platforms or Web–TV), a great dynamic can be seen which has triggered numerous discussions about the future of TV for some time now. This article will summarize the results of two different audience studies. Film and television shows are meanwhile distributed online via Video-on-Demand platforms such as Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. The first audience study has dealt with the use of VoD-platforms in Germany investigating user rituals, user motivation to watch films and TV shows on these platforms, and the meaning of VoD in everyday life. Most of the participants in this study reported that they mainly watch TV drama series at Netflix or Amazon Prime. Therefore, the second audience study focused the online use of television drama series of individuals and couples elaborating the phenomenon of binge watching. In relating the audience practice to the new structures of the television market the article will shed light on the future of television.

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