What Drives Selective Exposure to Political Information in Spain?

Communication research underlines two types of selective exposure to the media: one guided by ideological-partisan affiliations and one guided by interest in politics. This work will compare both motivations in the consumption of political information through three media types (digital press, television, and radio) by Spanish citizens during the 2019 November General Election. Through multinomial logistic regressions applied to a representative post-electoral survey, results show that ideological-partisan orientations are the most important variables governing selective exposure, especially for the digital press and the radio. Besides confirming ideological selective exposure, the data highlight an important tendency towards selective avoidance of news media perceived as ideologically incongruent. For television, however, both socio-demographic trends and ideological orientations exhibit a similar explanatory weight, which suggests that political segmentation of the Spanish television market is still being deployed by communication groups, in comparison with the press and the radio.

The Problems of Media Strategy Transformation of Russian Regional Television Broadcasting Companies in the Context of the Crisis of Traditional Media

The article deals with the problems faced by the regional television market in the context of the growing popularity of new media and the transition of Russia to a digital broadcasting format. Regional and municipal television broadcasting, having lost traditional platforms for promoting their content, faced the necessity to develop new platforms in a short time. The new media environment required regional TV companies to review the promotion concepts. The author of the article is the developer of one of such concepts of rebranding and relaunching a regional television studio in a new format, and, based on practical experience, analyzes the factors and difficulties of transformation of media strategies of regional TV companies. Five blocks of problems were identified as a result of testing of the concept of a new regional broadcasting. They include: project management, its staffing and financial support, analysis and interpretation of modern media measurements, transition to new video content formats adapted to digital platforms.

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

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.

Slovanská fantasy globálnym popkultúrnym fenoménom

The aim of the paper is to introduce or rather (re)present The Witcher as a model-like pop cultural phenomenon illustrating the mechanisms within the framework of which a local hero, the main character of fantasy narratives written by Andrzej Sapkowski, transforms into a global hero. The Witcher — the character as well as the trademark, or rather brand — represents popular culture pars pro toto and emblematically a pop cultural artefact, undergoing a transformation on an axis from short stories to a novel saga, becoming an object of local cinematic and television-based adaptation and also a thematic basis for a successful digital-game series distributed globally, as well as recently a source of a high-budget television series designed for a global television market.

Understanding the changing television market: A comparison of the macroeconomy of the United States, United Kingdom and Australia

The business of television has been transformed by digital distribution and internationalisation. The implications of these changes vary based on a range of structural dynamics such as national scale, language and pre-existing norms tied to particular macroeconomic conditions, of which, the balance of funding is key. This article looks beyond the general sense of crisis tied to digital disruption to investigate the macroeconomic conditions that shape how national television industries are able to adapt and respond to the disruption. Although disruption is universal, different macroeconomic conditions enable different industrial impacts and possible policy solutions. The article uses comparative analysis of three English language countries with very distinctive television ecologies to reveal the under-acknowledged role macroeconomic features – particularly the advent of new tools for advertising – play in shaping the options and opportunities for national industries going forward.

Turkish Soaps: Understanding Pleasure Among Iranians and the Underlying Political Economy

This article examines how young urban audiences in Iran derive pleasure from transnationally broadcasted Turkish soaps. Since the early 1990s, the furtherance of developments in communication technologies and the emergence of the new forces in the global television market have resulted in a profusion of free-to-air satellite TV programmes, transforming the television in Iranians' living rooms from a local and monotonous medium into a vibrant and abundant one. Flooded with a cornucopia of tele-viewing choices, Iranian audiences have particularly been enthralled by Turkish soap operas in recent years. Such popularity, especially among younger audiences, is remarkable considering the general prohibition of satellite TV in Iran and authorities' specific censure of Turkish soaps for having corrupting effects on Iranian culture. While soaps have historically been regarded as pleasurable texts primarily aimed towards women, the consumption of non-local forms of such popular cultural programmes both by male and female Iranian audiences raises questions about the kind of pleasures derived according to their gender-specificity. Through an analysis of the data drawn from a series of focus group discussions with 25-35 years old participants in Tehran, this study explores the diverse ways in which these individuals derive pleasure from watching Turkish soaps. Ultimately, the findings challenge the extrapolation of the traditional theories of political economy, which regards Turkish soaps as global purveyors of predetermined pleasure circumscribed by forces of international markets, and instead suggests that the kinds of pleasure can only be ascertained at the local level of consumption. Keywords: Satellite TV, Iranian audiences, Turkish soaps, pleasure, political economy.

In-depth study of Netflix’s original content of fictional series. Forms, styles and trends in the new streaming scene

This article presents an analysis of the original content of fictional series created by one of the leading companies in the streaming television market, Netflix. This work aims at offering an in-depth study of the original series of the company Netflix, which will allow to classify these contents according to their strategic nature and, secondly, to offer a formal taxonomic overview on them. In addition, their forms, formats, languages, genres and thematic descriptors are analysed in order to establish a taxonomy for the classification of Netflix’s original content. To this end, this article is based on a quantitative method with qualitative contributions, adopting a descriptive but also exploratory approach. Its sample is made up of 490 series available on the Spanish version of the platform from its beginning in 2013 to 2019. The results lead to find a commitment to the production of fictional series with a global nature, but also focused on the local through alliances and productive methods with local businesses. Furthermore, the importance of in-house production as a present and medium-term future strategy is highlighted, together with the commitment to the division of production languages, considering local languages as a resource for the acceptance of the products. As for the predominant formats, a new trend marks how new audiovisual products are created by focusing, among other things, on reducing the duration and longevity of the series broadcast by the company.

Changing the Market Position of Public Television – Case of Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary

The market position of public television channels has been changing over the last three decades. From monopolists, public televisions have become just one of the players on the television market. This paper analyses the position of public television in Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary. These neighbouring countries are similar but have different market power of public TV. Croatia has a strong public television, Hungary has very week public television, and Slovenia is in the middle. The aim of this paper is to show how the audience of public TV channels has been changing and based on this data, the author will estimate regression models for future forecasting of audience share for public TV channels in all three countries. This will enable the analysis of the market position of the whole group of public TV channels in each country.