State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ - Conference Brochure

Critical Studies in Television Conference

State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ 5-7 September 2018 Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK

Supported by Edge Hill University, Research Investment Fund, The Institute for Creative Enterprise (ICE), The Critical Studies in Television editorial team and the ECREA Television Studies Team

CRITICAL STUDIES IN TELEVISION Four issues a year http://journals.sagepub.com/home/cst Critical Studies in Television publishes articles that draw together divergent disciplines and different ways of thinking, to promote and advance television as a distinct academic discipline. It welcomes contributions on any aspect of television— production studies and institutional histories, audience and reception studies, theoretical approaches, conceptual paradigms and pedagogical questions. It continues to invite analyses of the compositional principles and aesthetics of texts, as well as contextual matters relating to both contemporary and past productions. CST also features book reviews, dossiers and debates. The journal is scholarly but accessible, dedicated to generating new knowledge and fostering a dynamic intellectual platform for television studies.

Submit now For more information, visit: https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/critical-studiesin-television/journal202513#submission-guidelines

Read the new Special Issue on Acting on Television: Analytical Methods and Approaches and the accompanying collection of articles from the Critical Studies in Television archive.

For more information, visit the journal website: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/cst

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Critical Studies in Television Conference

State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Venue: Creative Edge Edge Hill University, UK. Wednesday, 5 September

Thursday, 6 September

Friday, 7 September

10.00am Registration Opens

9.00am Registration Opens

9.30am Registration Opens

11.00am Conference Opening

9.30am – 11.00am Parallel Sessions: Panel 4A: Multiplatform, Complexity and TV IV Panel 4B: The Anthroposcene and Resilience of Humanity 11.00am Coffee

10.00am – 11.15am Screening: Hospital with Q&A with Helen Littleboy

11.30am - 12.30pm Opening Keynote Ruchi Kher Jaggi

11.30am – 1.00pm Round Table What my PhD Has Taught Me about TV Studies

11.30am – 1.00pm Parallel Sessions: Panel 7A: Contexts of Production Panel 7B: Taking stock, Catching up, Moving forward: Reflections on TV Scholarship in TVIV

12.30pm Lunch

1.00pm Lunch

1.00pm lunch

1.30pm – 3.00pm Parallel Sessions: Panel 1A: Understanding Production Posts Panel 1B: New and Old Modes of Structuring Television Consumption

2.00pm – 3.30pm Parallel Sessions: Panel 5A: Issues of Disciplinarity Panel 5B: Local and Global in Netflix and Prestige Drama 3.30pm Coffee

2.00pm Concluding Keynote: Derek Kompare, Kristyn Gorton and Eva Novrup Redvall in conversation with Janet McCabe

3.00pm – 4.00pm Round Table Teaching Television Now

4.00pm – 5.30pm Parallel Sessions: Panel 6A: Re-thinking the Audience and Disciplinary Boundaries Panel 6B: Shifting Patterns of Production

3.00pm Conference Closes

4.00pm Coffee 4.30pm – 6.00pm Parallel Sessions: Panel 3A: Global and Local Meaning Making Through Television Narratives Panel 3B: TVIV and the Queering of Traditional TV

6.00pm pick up for dinner outside Creative Edge 6.30pm – 7.30pm tour of Liverpool 8.00pm Dinner (if booked)

8.00pm public event at The Arts Centre

Supported by Edge Hill University, Research Investment Fund, The Institute for Creative Enterprise (ICE), The Critical Studies in Television editorial team and the ECREA Television Studies Team

Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Keynote Speakers

KRISTYN GORTON

DEREK KOMPARE

Kristyn is Reader in Film and Television at the University of York.

Her research into desire and emotion and affect spans film, television and visual culture. She has published widely, including the monographs on Media Audiences: Television, Meaning and Emotion (2009) and Emotion Online: Theorising Affect on the Internet (2013). She has also been a script/dialogue consultant on Kay Mellor’s Fat Friends.

Derek is Associate Professor and Chair of Film and Media Arts in the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University.

His work on television forms and systems includes the books Rerun Nation: How Repeats Invented American Television(2005) and CSI (2010), as well as many journal and anthology articles. He is also a co-editor of the collection Making Media Work: Cultures of Management in the Entertainment Industries (2014). His current interests focus on the fate of past media systems, objects, and forms in the digital era.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Keynote Speakers

RUCHI KHER JAGGI

EVA NOVRUP REDVALL

Dr Ruchi Kher Jaggi is currently the Director of Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication, Symbiosis International University, Pune, India. She has been teaching Media & Communication Theories, Media & Culture Studies, Research Methodology, Development Communication and Writing for Media courses to undergraduate and post-graduate students for over 13 years now.

Her academic interests include media representations, children and television, popular culture analysis, gender studies, television studies, and emerging discourses of identity on the new media. She is a peer- reviewer with national and international journals and publications including Taylor & Francis, Sage & IGI Global and also on the editorial board of Amity Journal of Media & Communication Studies.

Eva is Associate Professor in film and media studies at The University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on European film and television production, e.g. screenwriting practices, coproduction strategies and specific production frameworks. She has published widely in international books and journals. Among her latest books are the monograph Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark: From The Kingdom to The Killing (2012), the edited collection European Cinema and Television: Cultural Policy and Everyday Life (with Ib Bondebjerg and Andrew Higson, 2015) and Transnational European Television Drama: Production, Genres and Audiences (co-authored with Ib Bondebjerg et al., 2017.) She has been a film critic for the daily Danish newspaper Information since 1999 and is part of the Adjudication Committee for The Nordic Council Film Prize 2011–2020.

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Research in the Department of Media

The Department of Media is home to a flourishing and distinct research culture. The department made its first submission to the Research Excellence Framework 2014.

From this submission, 45% of research outputs were judged to be ‘world leading’ (4*) or ‘internationally excellent’ (3*) in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

The department has well-established research interests in issues of identity, activism, politics, narrative, aesthetics, and production studies. There is a growing focus on practice as research (PaR) and practice led research. Since REF2014, published outputs include books on cinema and politics, media and cosmopolitanism, television and British cinema since 1990, the visual music film, and Irish republican media activism. Other recent journal and book publications reflect staff research interests in sound aesthetics, popular music studies, television and audience studies, European media, animals and eco-media, creative labour, and questions of identity and representation in film.

The department aims to develop and sustain a supportive research culture that stimulates innovative work at all academic levels. A Media research seminar series runs throughout the academic year hosting a diverse range of speakers. Academics work closely with two of the Edge Hill University research institutes – the Institute for Creative Enterprise (ICE) and Institute for Public Policy and Professional Practice (I4P) – and contribute to the Festival of Ideas. The research institutes support a series of events, symposiums, workshops and conferences organised by Media academics. Members of the department direct or co-convene the Institute for Creative Enterprise (ICE), the Centre for Human Animal Studies (CfHAS) and the Ethnicity, Race and Racism Seminar (ErRS) research hub.

Researchers also work with regional organisations including Tate Liverpool and FACT.

Current PhD research in the department focuses on Bulgarian cinema, Indian television serials, representations of veganism in UK newspapers, Hollywood-China relations, animals and vegan art practice, independent authorship and media convergence, and activism and film festivals.

The department welcomes enquiries about postgraduate research.

Please contact Professor Claire Parkinson claire.parkinson@edgehill.ac.uk or Dr Hannah Andrews hannah.andrews@edgehill.ac.uk.

ehu.ac.uk/media 6

Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 1A: Understanding Production Posts Chair: Mareike Jenner

THEY WILL FIX IT IN POST

THE GENDERED PRACTICE OF THE TV “OPT OUT”

Anna Zoellner - University of Leeds, UK

Perelandra Beedles - Edge Hill University, UK

Digital technology has undoubtedly brought a lot of opportunities for television production. It has made equipment more affordable, smaller and lighter thus increasing flexibility during the filming process; and the expansion of CGI and visual effects provide new opportunities for visual manipulation. Naturally, these developments have an impact on the processes and requirements of television production. They are frequently discussed in the context of media quality and democratisation, for example through lowering entry barriers to media production and improving the visual quality of television programming. Other work has considered the impact of digital technology on labour and production processes within mainstream media, for example concerning the role of social media and online distribution.

Opting out of the government directive, regarding how many hours an employee can be asked to work, has been common practice in the broadcast industry for many years. Filming shoots are complex, demanding and expensive, populated by crews who pride themselves on the ability to keep going until the final scene is complete. Television Production Managers have long relied on staff ignoring the 48-hour rule, when drawing up filming plans. The opt out clause is often the only way ambitious shooting schedules can be achieved and viewed as a freedom from convention, but is this really the case?

The almost ethos of staying “until the job is done” effectively ignores how impossible this masculine work ethic can be for women to subscribe to. By creating filming schedules which favour those with few caring responsibilities, are we effectively barring female workers from certain projects? Reinforcing a machismo culture of production? Should we be moving to a feminisation of TV production schedules?

However, less attention has been paid to the traditionally ‘technical’ roles in television production and the impact of digital technology on their work conditions and status. Based on interviews with television staff working on location (camera, sound) and in post-production (edit, visual effects) in the UK, this paper focuses on their experience as part of the production team.

It aims to expand the existing body of work on media labour and draw attention to the technical side of television production including its constraints, conditions and implications for TV representation in a digital age.

Initial results indicate, firstly, that digital technology is used predominantly as a tool in the rationalisation and standardisation of production processes rather than serving as an opportunity for developing new forms of creative expression. For example, coupled with a lack of investment in technical training the size of production teams has been reduced requiring multi-skilled practitioners or untrained yet cheap industry entrants for on-location shoots instead of a (more expensive) crew with specialised technical expertise. Secondly, practitioners report a lack of recognition and even ignorance of the skill and time involved in technical aspects of the production, which seem to be based on naïve assumptions and beliefs in the near ‘magical’ properties of digital technology.

This materialises, for example, in unrealistic expectations concerning completion deadlines and achievability – especially in post-production. In line with these experiences, workers feel unrecognised and under-appreciated facilitating feelings of alienation and frustration in the work place. This indicates a shift in the status of technical staff in television production that links to problematic perceptions of technology and craft with implications for the quality of both television labour and television texts.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 1B: New and Old Modes of Structuring Television Consumption Chair: Lothar Mikos

CURATING TELEVISION: WALTER PRESENTS, POST-PRODUCTION CULTURE, AND TELEVISION AS REPOSITORIES OF KNOWLEDGE

THE NETFLIX FIX IS IN; THE PORTALS, PRACTICES, AND POLITICS OF INTERNET-DISTRIBUTED TELEVISION Fairooz Samy - Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Kenneth Longden - University of Salford, UK Walter Presents is Channel 4’s ‘free-to-use’ foreign TV Drama streaming platform, launched 3 January 2016. I will argue that it is indicative of a variety of trends that may reveal the state of television in the post-network era. As a facilitator of extra and niche content, it is ‘removed from the structure of television’s scheduled flow’ due to ‘its embedding in a new, digital media context’ (Bennet & Strange, 2011: 1). It specializes in curating and exhibiting foreign language dramas from around the world in ways where the national is experienced transnationally. Its content is purportedly selected (or curated) by one person - a pro/am fan or curator, Walter Luzzolino, a TV producer, but also enthusiastic fan of foreign language TV dramas. It therefore promotes a dynamic of television that moves between organised, professional, knowledge, information communities, and ‘unofficial’, esoteric, knowledge/ information communities similar to YouTube. It can also be situated in what Bourriaud calls a ‘Post-Production’ culture and era (2002), and what Elsaesser and Verevis describe as a transformed media culture.

Netflix, the global streaming service giant, has burrowed its way into popular consciousness and is now synonymous with the idea of cord-cutting and a ‘new normal’ method of watching television.

Netflix’s ability to become ubiquitous, to ingratiate itself into the hearts and minds of over 100 million worldwide users and incentivise the restructuring of the television industry, is impressive. What are the reasons for its success, and what does this success mean for scholars, audiences and, importantly, the industry? As the leading internet-distributed television portal/platform today, Netflix is a fascinating case-study for the debates around the strategies, innovations, and possibilities of digital media and internet-distributed television (Lotz, 2017).

My research examines whether digital media theory around portals, data, and the internet can help scholars to better contextualise internet-distributed television, and their providers, within the field. To demonstrate this, I build on Amanda Lotz’s 2016-2017 work to consider how the Netflix portal facilitates the practice of binge-watching and the ways in which the userfriendliness and rhetorical framing of the portal presents internet-distributed television as an ‘experience’.

However, none of these dynamics are straightforward where Walter Presents is concerned, and it is with these dynamics in mind, along with consideration of the impact and dimensions of a postproduction culture, that this paper will examine the state of television in the post-network era.

As Netflix is constantly evolving in response to changes in the television industry - and is at times instigating these changes - I also discuss the value of including industry discourse in the forms of press releases, advertising materials, and popular media journalism. Netflix’s framing within popular media, both through its own promotional material and across industry press, simultaneously creates, reinforces, and challenges discourses around television while normalising ideas of what internetdistributed television norms and practices are.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 1B: New and Old Modes of Structuring Television Consumption Chair: Lothar Mikos

EXPLORING TELEVISION SEASONALITY Derek Johnston - Queen’s University Belfast, UK

While the pressure from on-demand video services grows, and time-shifting of viewing becomes easier and more popular, viewing of linear, broadcast television still remains the dominant method of consuming television in the UK. This is particularly clear when looking at television seasonally, rather than on a programme-byprogramme basis; while timeshifting now represents 14% of television viewing in the UK, according to BARB, most of this viewing occurs in the short term. Not only that, but live viewing is still key around events such as sports, which still appear to function as a way of binding communities of shared interests. At the same time, the increasingly international nature of televisual product, and increasingly synchronised international release schedules on both broadcast and on-demand platforms, can be seen as detaching the specifics of seasonal associations within a particular culture from the television product, as can be seen in the spread of the US version of Halloween internationally, largely through film and television.

This paper will consider the continued significance of television seasonality, even in the era of on-demand and timeshifting. It will draw upon my own research into seasonality and genre, as well as the research of other academics, including that from the special issue of the Journal of Popular Television and the subsequent dossier on Christmas television that I have edited. This research demonstrates that seasonality is significant in television viewing in a number of ways: it reinforces tradition and group identity in both visible and banal ways (along the lines of Billig’s conception of Banal Nationalism), it supports and encourages particular frameworks of feeling about the seasons and nature, and it provides frameworks for interpretation of narratives and concepts due to the wider associations of the seasons. Thirty years ago, Paddy Scannell argued that the temporal construction of broadcasting, including its seasonal arrangements, were significant and in need of study.

Through this overview, the paper argues that not only is the study of television seasonality still important, but that it is part of the wider consideration of the temporality of television that needs to be engaged with and understood as we see a generational shift away from the live and linear, but one that still engages with some aspects of the linear model, whether for specific media events or in the patterns of releasing and consumption of on-demand material.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

2: Round Table: Teaching Television Now

Public Event

Chair: Manuel Jose Damasio

Manuel Jose Damasio, University of Lusofona, Portugal Hannah Andrews, Edge Hill University, UK Lothar Mikos, Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Germany Prinselaar Debra Anya, University of Salford, UK Considering the challenges to definitions of what television as a medium might be, we need to consider too how we might want to teach television today. This is true on the side of the academic study – do traditional concepts of flow and segmentation still make sense when audiences and SVOD providers pull programmes out of their traditional schedule on broadcast TV? But it is also true on the side of production – can we ignore, for example, the ancillary content or branded content that is increasingly creating new jobs in the industry and where new and innovative thinking by (potentially) our own students is most sought after? The round table brings together academics from across Europe to discuss these ideas. It will be led by Manuel Jose Damasio from the University of Lusofona, Lisbon, Portugal, who is part of the board of the European Association of Film and Television Schools. © Liverpool Film Office

CAPTURING LOCALITY IN TELEVISION PRODUCTION 8.00pm - The Arts Centre There is a growing recognition that it’s important for audiences to see specific localities represented. As audiences, we might enjoy Scott & Bailey because of the crime stories, or the relationship between the detectives, or because we recognise the landscape and want to look at it. Similarly, in documentary, we might want to watch a documentary precisely because it is about a particular region.

In this event, two television makers screen part of their work and talk about what they have done to capture the locality. They will also be available for questions from the audience.

Jack Archer has made a number of films with Hopscotch for BBC Scotland. He will present his documentary on Scottish Bothies, called Bothy Life.

Len Gowing is a cinematographer who has worked on a number of productions including Scott & Bailey, Call the Midwife and most important for the Merseysiders amongst us, Moving On.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 3A: Global and Local Meaning Making Through Television Narratives Chair: David Levente Palatinus

THE FUTURE OF SERIAL NARRATIVE IS THE FUTURE OF TV: SOAP OPERAS IN THE US AND THE UK Ahmet Atay - College of Wooster, USA

Our lives and realities are shaped by media images and stories; in return, our realities inspire writers and media makers. A close relationship exists between soap operas and their audience.

Because of the long-time viewership and the frequency of the episodes, over time, the fans get to know soap opera characters intimately, identify with them and their stories, and consider them part of their “real lives” (Baym, 2000; Geraghty, 1991). The nature of the soap opera narrative allows the audience to “intimately enter [its] fictional world” (Geraghty, 1991, p. 10). Therefore, the nature of soap opera stories, their construction, and how they are told influence audience satisfaction and identification.

This paper aims to observe these changes in the two countries from a comparative perspective. By doing so, I can explore the social trends and attitudes toward the genre. This cross-cultural comparison also provides insights into the current status of the genre in different media landscapes. As previously stated, regardless of the differences among these shows and the culturally bounded attitudes toward them, their construction and narrative structure are similar. Because of their global nature, they influence one another. I believe that this comparison also sheds light on the new trends in the genre. Perhaps some conclusions can be drawn from the decline of soap opera viewership in the US and their continuing popularity in the UK.

By building on the work of Allen (1995), Matelski (2012), and Rios and Castañeda (2011), I argue that soap operas are global products.

Because of this worldwide circulation, they influence and borrow ideas from one another to appeal to national and international audiences simultaneously. Therefore, their stories aim to focus on universal issues, and their characters try to represent the changing nature of our local and national communities. Building on Barker’s (1999, p. 3) argument that globalization augments our cultural resources, I suggest that such a process is creating a global soap opera audience. Barker asserted that television texts could be both local and global. The soap opera is a global storytelling form because its narrative style is employed in several different countries and soap operas are some of the most exported forms of television (Barker 1999, p.54). In this essay, I focus on British and US soap operas in the context of globalization.

Although soap operas have a long and rich history in the US, due to various economic and cultural forces, they have been gradually declining. For example, CBS cancelled GL in 2009 and ATWT in 2010; whereas ABC ended AMC in 2011 and OLTL in 2012. Since then, the US television networks have not introduced any new daytime serial. Ford and colleagues (2011) and Levine (2009, 2011) examined the changes within the genre and the US media landscape to understand the new trends; however, since then, the genre has witnessed some transformations. This essay build on and adds to the discussion by Ford and colleagues because it reflects on the recent changes, such as the cancelation of networks soaps (in the US), their reappearance on web domains, and the emergence of web-based soap operas. Despite the abovementioned cancellations and the transformation of AMC and OLTL to web streaming and their eventual termination, the ratings of Y&R and B&B have soared in 2015, increasing their success.

Likewise, in recent years, British soap operas have seen a small decline but remain extremely popular and are still among the highest-rated television programs.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 3A: Global and Local Meaning Making Through Television Narratives Chair: David Levente Palatinus

“LET HER LIVE”: A CASE OF STUDY OF FICTIONAL NARRATIVE ON REGIONAL TELEVISION IN COLOMBIA Oscar Arias and Alfredo Sabbagh Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia Since its birth in the mid-80s, public regional television in Colombia has sought to appoint itself as an alternative to the hegemony of narrative structures and production models that arrived from the centralist private television. Despite these intentions, its development has run into some political interference, anachronistic regulatory frameworks, unstable financial sources and minimal experimentation in TV schedules and formats, the latter particularly focused on the informative and on entertainment or variety shows.

From technical difficulties, lower budgets and lack of human audiovisual production roles, fiction as a genre had turned into a “no game” shifter in the entire Colombia´s regional television grid.

In the same way as the private television broadcast network were turned into a machinery that represents a social region as a stereotyped representation of the different cultures in Colombia, the narratives of the soap operas (telenovelas) and television series produced and molded by the central production left the peripherical regions lagging behind.

In the last three years, the financial strategies include coproduction and participation in state grants. This has led to regional television channels to develop fictional series that have achieved significant results both in terms of ratings and impact. At the same time, the regional broadcaster turns into a window that reflects the fictional products developed by independent production companies reflecting the aesthetics and narratives near the core of the regional culture itself, that reach viewers and impact on the rating numbers as a big hit in the television offers in Colombia.

Is this a trend or a crucial moment in Colombian regional television?

Does the television business models and production systems indicate a shift towards fictional narratives genres in regional television? These questions have turned into the goals for this paper. From those we focus on three moments. In the first one, we will reveal the historical development of regional television in Colombia, the second one, will reveal the backgrounds of fictional production from the regions of Colombia and the third one will analyze in depth the productions of Déjala Morir - Let Her Die - , produced and broadcast on the regional television channel Telecaribe and also “Antes de la fiesta” - Before the Party -, produced by Kymera Productions and broadcasted on all the Colombian regional television channels.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 3B: Panel: TVIV and the Queering of Traditional Television Chair: Mareike Jenner

WHAT'S IN A NAME? HBO, NETFLIX, AND THE TVIV CONUNDRUM

‘YOU ARE NO LONGER JUST YOU’: THE PROMISE OF KINAESTHETIC EMPATHY IN SENSE8 AND HANNIBAL.

Gary Edgerton - Butler University, Indianapolis, USA

Zoe Shacklock - University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK

Television is a protean medium, being at once a technology, an industry, an art form, and an institutional force. In the United States, it emerged as an idea whose time had come at the end of World War II. Since then, TV has been in a continual state of change and renewal. Its history has developed through a prehistory (before 1948) to what media critic Steve Behrens first characterized some three decades ago as TVI (1948-1975) and TVII (1975-1995). Moreover, various historical analysts have correctly identified a TVIII, post network or digital era (beginning circa 1995) where television is virtually available anywhere at any time, given its synergistic relationship with the Internet and a wide array of digital devices.

Recent developments in television distribution and delivery reflect a shift away from a mass audience and towards a more atomised, individualised body of viewers. For many scholars, this trend is a worrying one, reflecting the demise of true forms of connection in an increasingly fragmented and mediated world. Karen Lury argues that digital television destroys the ‘common culture of empathy to which [the medium] once aspired’ (2011: 201). Yet while new avenues of television delivery are changing its cultures of community and connection, the scholarship is too eager to discount the existence of televisual empathy in the digital world. Mourning the demise of television’s mass appeal seems suspiciously akin to other pre-emptive accounts of the ‘death’ of the medium that circulate throughout the critical and popular literature. Television is not dead, of course, but neither is empathy; rather, the two can be found and (re)theorised together.

No doubt the key to thinking about TV in 2018 is to reconceptualize it as a legacy term. Television as a technology is not a static piece of hardware, but a business model, a set of production practices, and a codified listing of specific aesthetic choices. TV is also a social process that has grown increasingly personalized, interactive, mobile, on demand, and global in scope during the first two decades of the 21st century.

In this paper I argue that contemporary television narratives demonstrate an interest in re-imagining new cultures of empathy in a fragmented world. I explore these ideas through two recent dramas that both explicitly engage with the politics of empathy, Sense8 (Netflix 2015-2017) and Hannibal (NBC 2013-2015). Both programmes present a mode of empathy that demands an embodied understanding of others, in which the ability to feel with other people plays out across the body in motion. I argue that this reconfiguration of empathy into what I am calling kinaesthetic empathy has much to offer our understanding of new television audiences.

The global television industry today is best thought of as a threelegged stool comprised of broadcasting, cable-and-satellite, and OTT streaming sectors. Encompassing the first two legs, there are one billion TV households worldwide with just a little over 11 percent of these television homes situated in the United States.

American viewership is just a fraction of the global total, but the U.S. is disproportionally represented in the production and international distribution of TV programming, having an economic and creative stake in more than 500 scripted series produced in 2017. Geography therefore matters.

Both Hannibal and Sense8 explicitly present kinaesthetic empathy as a structure of mediated relation within their narratives, or a way in which empathetic connections operate beyond more conventional ideas of proximity and community. Indeed, both programmes suggest that kinaesthetic empathy has the power to create new kinds of intersubjectivity. In Sense8’s utopian empathy, reaching out across the boundaries of the body promotes a queer sense of fluidity and a superior way of being human. In Hannibal, in contrast, blurring corporeal boundaries may offer new ways of relating to the world, but these are largely a source of horror and violence. Yet despite their very different affective tones, both series strongly believe in the transformative promise of kinaesthetic empathy. In so doing, they suggest a persistence of empathetic connection in new television cultures, one in which community is defined in ways beyond a traditional, normative mass.

They also offer space to reflect on how we, as both television audience and television scholars, might be similarly empathetically transformed by the television we consume and critique.

Arguably something new and different is currently happening to TV. Where HBO was the dominant change agent in television during the 2000s, Netflix has usurped that role in the 2010s. A case can be made that HBO is still a vestige of TVIII, while Netflix is the prototypical entertainment corporation of TVIV. It currently has plans to invest $8 billion in content creation in 2018, enabling this new genus of portal TV network to produce approximately 700 original series this year (with 80 of those programs in languages other than English) or roughly as much programming as the rest of the industry combined. This presentation compares and contrasts HBO and Netflix as business, economic, and artistic exemplars that illustrate the kinds of changes that are occurring throughout the whole television industry as it moves headlong towards another transitional benchmark that might legitimately be called TVIV.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 3B: Panel: TVIV and the Queering of Traditional Television Chair: Mareike Jenner

TVIV AS TRANS TV: AN AESTHETIC INTERVENTION INTO MULTIPLE TELEVISION INDUSTRY TRANSFORMATIONS Michael Goddard - University of Westminster, UK The recent Trans TV conference held at the University of Westminster looked at many of the transformations that have been associated with the term TVIV (Jenner, 2016) or platform television (Lotz, 2017): the rise of new platforms for both television production and distribution, the emergence of new modes of televisual consumption and also the emergence of new forms of televisual content. One of the key arguments that the conference proposed was that a purely industry based production studies approach was not sufficient to grasp the full impacts of these transformations, which also need to be seen in an aesthetic framework. Just as past technological and institutional transformations such as the emergence and dominance of cable and satellite TV, is inextricable from the development of such “third golden age” high end drama shows as Mad Men (2007-2015) and The Wire (2002-2008), so too the emergence of Netflix and Amazon not only as distributors but also producers of television has given rise to new aesthetic possibilities, arguably including a greater visibility and potential for television that is queer and trans in the more specific sense of gender fluidity beyond binaries.

Through an analysis of the markedly different aesthetic strategies of Sense8 (Netflix, 2015-2018) and Transparent (2014-2018), this paper will explore to what extent the TVIV era of platform television makes possible a queering of television aesthetics whether or not this is an explicit strategy of particular shows or an effect of new televisual assemblages even further removed from the model of network television than cable channels like HBO or AMC. It will argue that this aesthetic intervention is necessary, in order to challenge purely technologically determinist models of televisual transformation.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 4A: Multiplatform, Complexity and TV IV Chair: Hannah Andrews

SERIAL PINBOARDING Anne Ganzert - University of Konstanz, Germany

Contemporary TV series frequently utilize cork boards, screens, or ‘mental images’ to visualize, structure, and create singular cases, riddles, or timelines, often over the course of many episodes, even entire seasons. As the audience watches the series they get to see the practices of serial pinboarding – a concept I have developed in my PhD dissertation. Pinboarding as such encompasses the practices involved in the board’s creation, such as the handling of the objects on or in front of a board by the TV shows’ characters and the staging of these objects, actions and discourses. Analyzing pinboarding therefore includes the (often analogue) material creation as well as the filmic fabrication of a pin board. Pinboarding also covers the visualization of the fictional characters’ cognitive processes, which are often also connected to specific sounds or music, and the triggering of visual associations or conclusions from the viewer’s standpoint. Consequently, in order to convey or trigger anything, pinboarding also refers to the shots and framing, the set-making and lighting, the special effects and computer animations. This conglomerate becomes serial pinboarding when the boards (or screens) are used for more than the ‘murder of the week’, when it becomes a meta operator that goes beyond concrete iterations and allows theoretic reflections.

Serial pinboarding plays an important role to the transmedia storytelling of Heroes and Heroes Reborn (NBC 2005-2010, 2015), to the serial structuring and distribution of shows like Homeland (Showtime 2011—), Flashforward (ABC 2009-2010) and Prison Break (FOX 2005-2009) or the Castle (ABC 20092016) viewing experience. There are many other examples in which pinboarding comes to the fore as a televisual and serial phenomenon, thus emerging as a meta concept running through TV as such. And even if it appears only marginally, serial pinboarding can structure viewing experiences: A Series of Unfortunate Events (Netflix 2017—) was offered to be ‘binge watched’, however the intro strongly emphasized episode pairs – with the visible pinboarding and the support of the song lyrics – thus posing different questions than platform television (and its productions) have raised so far.

Even though serial pinboarding may be primarily associated with ‘complex TV’ – mostly from the US – where it brings visual/ diagrammatic structure to the diegesis, serial pinboarding can in fact be found in different genres (crime, comedy, drama, sitcom, cartoons), and in almost any country’s TV productions. It might therefore be indicative of broader developments in distribution, the ‘flow of commodities’, production and reception and therefore warrant further analysis and discussion.

Grasping this inherently interdisciplinary phenomenon consequentially leads to a rethinking of the methodological tool kit of TV studies. However, television studies have had little concern for these phenomena outside a narrative device so far. In my paper, I argue, that serial pinboarding is a great instance of how TV scholarship may (or has to) adopt concepts from other disciplines, such as media philosophic theorems, analytic devices from art theory, approaches to cognitive processes, mobile media and app studies etc., in order to thoroughly understand television and its audience as they emerge today, may it be as TV IV or something entirely different.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 4A: Multiplatform, Complexity and TV IV Chair: Hannah Andrews

EXPANDED AND DIVERGENT FRANCHISE ADAPTATION OF FANTASY AS INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY Jason Scott - Leeds Trinity University, UK

This paper considers the significance of expanded and divergent franchise adaptation of ‘fantasy’ genre narratives to the contemporary global (Hollywood) television industry, and hence to television studies, focusing on the phenomenally successful Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. These blockbuster or event franchise series, within a wider trend of ‘cultural recycling’ as central to contemporary, conglomerate media production strategies and practices (reboot/remake/prequels/loose adaptations and updating of presold or familiar IP and narratives including public domain fairy tales), evidence shifting responses to the changing ecology, technology, and economy of television.

These proven brands/titles, particularly where successfully framed as cross-over event television, exceeding their generic or industrial origins, provide unprompted awareness, for their initial audience [to mitigate US cancellation syndrome], presold international/ invested audiences (and hence enhanced presales or coproduction potential), proven appeal and often success across media/ platforms, in the form of characters and other attractors that translate whether into tie-ins or transmedia storytelling, and an established brand identity that provides an iconography, world, or even generic grammar as creative catalyst for long form serial narrative.

Franchise adaptation aims to ameliorate risk, continuing the focus on remediation, within a new or evolving industry or technology, that predates the industry; and to exploit presold appeal, the benefits of ancillary revenues, as well as marketing, publicity and promotional platforms and practices (specific to television franchises, story, world and character franchises, or media franchising more generally).

Whilst the divergent adaptation into complex/serial television narrative were introduced within a discourse of fidelity, for Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead this evolved to accommodate self-conscious variation or modification to narrative events and characters, motivated by fidelity to the core, premise, ‘spirit’ or experience of the ‘source’ text, with the books or graphic novels as ‘jumping off point’ (Cogman), interlaced by the conventions or affordances of serial television narrative. Hence the necessity of a parallel, and often simultaneously expanded/condensed ‘iteration’ or storyworld of the show – two different entities “the comic and the show exist separately so that one doesn’t spoil the other” (Kirkman quoted in Truitt), negotiating the dual audiences of fans of the books/comics and shows.

An emphasis upon franchising and branding, overlapping with cross-media and transmedia storytelling, impacting changes to marketing and the paratextual surround, not exclusive to television but consistent with other convergent Hollywood/conglomerate media practices (i.e. parallels in film, comics, video games), accentuated within highly competitive markets with an abundance of product, is key to international/transnational awareness and appeal, hence marketability and amortised costs or additional revenues; as tentpole programming to drive viewers, particularly lucrative demographics, and subscribers to channel/ platform/service (or reduce churn) [broadcast, basic cable, Premium cable, untethered streaming services, SVOD – here HBO, AMC, Sky, Fox]; to invested/vocal/advocate fans associated with ‘cult event’ viewing [comic-con etc.]; across multiple revenue streams [initial broadcast, whether ad or subscription or a combination, syndication and international sales, ancillary revenues where franchise and brand profile help, from DVD/Blu Ray sales to merchandise to tie-ins].

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 4A: Multiplatform, Complexity and TV IV Chair: Hannah Andrews

WORKING A SCENE: MULTI-SUBSCRIPTION VIDEO AND THE INTERSECTING NARRATIVE WORLDS OF BRITISH PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING Benjamin Litherland & Tom Phillips University of Huddersfield, UK While popular memory still associates British professional wrestling of 1960s and 70s World of Sport on ITV, since 2010 the ‘sporting entertainment’ has developed as an emergent leading creative and cultural industry. Dozens of professional wrestling promotions now operate across the UK, with the most successful running large clubs and music venues in urban centres with dedicated and passionate fans and audiences. Digital broadcasting technologies and subscription video on demand (SVoD) services sit centrally in this resurgence. Fourteen British wrestling companies have their own SVoD services, costing between £5 and £10 a month, on the Pivotshare platform. On Pivotshare, shows are recorded and uploaded, and offer a case study in which segmented subscription content has created stable funding models, via small but loyal and engaged audiences.

Wrestlers and promoters develop entrepreneurial practices of selfbranding, self-promotion, and non-traditional storytelling that reveal the opportunities and influences of digital media in varied ways. Individual or small networks of performers use social media to negotiate, promote and disseminate their ‘character’ to diverse and varied audiences, and this research will contribute important, ethnographic work about how processes of ‘celebrity’ (Lingel, 2017; Marwick and boyd, 2011; Litherland, 2014) presentation on social media are negotiated by workers in this sector. In working across multiple companies, and often balancing varied narrative roles, professional wrestlers also complicate debates about ‘transmedia storytelling’ (Jenkins, 2010). Where transmedia storytelling has been understood as a streamlined logic of media franchises (Johnson, 2013), independent professional wrestlers appear to take influence from these trends, but subvert and adapt as needed, often leaving a fractured but overlapping set of stories.

This paper, then, will analyse the narrative conflicts and compromises as articulated on Pivotshare and social media, and utilising ‘netnography’ methods will assess how audiences engage with and make sense of these texts. Professional wrestling’s adoption of these models, we suggest, offers an intriguing case study for smaller and independent cultural sectors which are still experimenting with sustainable funding and economic models that can attract, retain and grow audiences (Hills, 2015; Strangelove, 2015; Landau, 2016), while the companies and wrestling utilising these platforms demonstrate interpretations, adoption and adaption and challenges to broader media industry logics.

This fragmented market has consequences for the way that professional wrestling narratives are told. Independent wrestlers are non-contracted, freelance workers who wrestle across multiple promotions, and then create characters that are then performed and adjusted to the narrative needs of specific wrestling companies, and these specific narratives are then sold on individual SVoD subscription services. This means that wrestlers exist across multiple, often conflicting, narratives in multiple fictional worlds.

At the same time, those narrative worlds often acknowledge and influence each other.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 4B: The Anthroposcene and Resilience of Humanity Chair: Simone Knox

TELEVISION, RESILIENCE AND THE CASE OF THE WALKING DEAD Kristyn Gorton - University of York, UK

xMuch of contemporary television drama circulates around the notion of resilience: the ability to survive amongst the walking dead, to make enough crystal meth to provide for your family and to launder enough money not to be killed. The ability of the central character to be resilient in the face of adversity, conflict and, at times, absurdity, forms the basis of many popular television dramas. This paper will consider how resilience is built into the narrative, its affects on audiences, the way it is largely gendered and to consider how it reflects changes within the television industry itself.

In their recent work on the ‘persistence’ of television, (2017) Frances Bonner and Jason Jacobs note an inherent persistence in the way people continue to engage and enjoy television, despite discourses of its uncertain future. They use The Good Life as a means of demonstrating the persistence of the sitcom and its enduring consistency. This paper will draw on Bonner and Jacob’s argument around persistence in order to consider how resilience is used in contemporary drama to affect viewers and to reflect industry practices. I will argue that television’s resilience highlights its institutional adaptability and constructs an emotional engagement with its audiences.

In addition to considering the resilience of television narratives, I also want to explore how the main characters are centred around the very notion of resilience, that is to say that their plot points are focused on overcoming challenging situations and surviving environmental threats to their well-being. In order to do this, I will focus particular attention on AMC’s The Walking Dead, but will also make reference to Ozark, Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones and consider how Harlots offers a gendered response to resilience.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 4B: The Anthroposcene and Resilience of Humanity Chair: Simone Knox

TELEVISION OF THE ANTHROPOCENE: SERIAL NARRATIVES AND THE POLITICS OF CRISIS David Levente Palatinus University of Ruzomberok, Slovakia This paper will attempt to re-think the role of television in the Anthropocene. This epoch presents us with anxieties and challenges the cultural representations of which specific serial narrative modes (sci-fi and post-apocalyptic fiction for instance) are particularly conducive to by way of their interest in the human and its relation to the non-human. These arguments are based on the understanding that the Anthropocene over the past decade has grown beyond the initial scope of a concept denoting an epoch characterized by the ‘human dominance of biological, chemical and geological processes on Earth’ (Crutzen and Schwagerl, 2011).

Expanding the critical stance that human presence has become a force shaping both organic and inorganic matter – from species to climate to the transformation of eco-systems – this talk will consider Anthropocene to be paramount in critical thinking, with implications for ecology, politics, technology, history, and identity.

Therefore, this talk will comment on the role televisual mediation plays in the circulation of ideas about human and non-human futures. It seeks to explore the ways in which these narratives negotiate the future in our present historical time when our sense of security has become eroded in relation to our own identity. The talk will ask what we make of our sense of crisis in relation to our Western civilization:

In recent literature, conceptualizations of the Anthropocene (cf.

Zylinksa 2011, Sloterdijk 2012, Briadotti 2013, Parikka 2014) have been frequently aligned with a post-human future that re-imagines these species in a world after a cataclysmic event (Bonneuil and Fressoz 2016). Such cultural narratives operate under the assumption that we are already within a(n ecological) catastrophe.

The underlying human experience (human condition – Heidegger) of the sense of an ending, or as Zizek puts it, the anxiety of living in the end-times (2011) is prompting us to reconsider what human is, what it means to dwell in the Anthropocene.

And what does this history reveal about the futures of the humanto-come?

What is the relation between practices of mediation, the Anthropocene, and the pervasiveness of political, economic and environmental anxieties (and the related ethical dilemmas) of our present historic time?

Do conceptualizations of the future have a history of their own a 'history of futures past'?

Investigating the television of the Anthropocene entails highlighting the broader political and popular cultural contexts in which these narratives unfold, as well as identifying the complex ethical dilemmas they unmask.

In line with the centrality of narratives of crisis and catastrophe, in recent years post-apocalyptic scenarios have become a central theme to various forms of television drama. From The 100 (CW, 2014-) to Incorporated (Syfy, 2016), from Altered Carbon (Netflix, 2018-) to The Expanse (Syfy, 2015-), or from Westworld (HBO, 2016-) to Zoo (CBS, 2015-) to Helix (Syfy, 2014-2015) and Extant (CBS, 2014-2015), most of these narratives mobilize classic tropes of technophobia, post-colonial and post-capitalist discourses, social polarization and totalitarianism, bio-power, genetic engineering and environmentalism, in the context of perpetual war and a culture of paranoia. These narratives reflect cultural anxieties and ethical dilemmas about the future – not just in our present historical time when our sense of security has become eroded in relation to our own identity, but also from a historical perspective

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

4: Roundtable: What my Ph.D. has taught me about TV Chair: Mita Lad

Mita Lad, Edge Hill University), UK (Chair) Zoe Shacklock - University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK Stephanie Clayton - University of East Anglia, UK Julia Havas - University of East Anglia, UK Gabrielle Smith - Northumbria University, UK (TBC) Key works (Gillespie, 1995 & Tufte, 2000) in television studies, but particularly within television audience studies, started life as research for doctoral projects. This panel brings together current and recently graduated Ph.D. students who have and are examining different aspects of television; from the viewing practices of diasporic audiences, to how kinaesthesia operates as a preferred reading strategy; from “quality” TV and its use of feminism in female-centred programming to the depiction of surveillance in British TV comedy. Together, the panel will consider the question ‘What has my Ph.D. taught me about TV?’ It aims to discuss how their research challenged established assumptions and privileged areas of study. It will also reflect new directions for TV studies or reiterate areas that TV studies needs to re-address.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 5A: Issues of Disciplinarity Chair: David Levente Palatinus

“A THEFT OF THEIR SUBJECT MATTER”: TELEVISION STUDIES, FILM CRITICISM, AND SIGHT AND SOUND’S TWIN PEAKS CONTROVERSY Julia Havas - University of East Anglia, UK Television studies’ establishment as academic discipline has since its beginnings been fraught with notions of defensiveness and legitimation; not only as an area of humanities but also in relation to the more widely recognised field of film studies. While its evolution has been characterised by a closer association with the approaches of social, communication, and cultural studies than with aesthetics-driven film studies, television scholarship is still frequently understood as the latter field’s auxiliary offshoot, both inside and outside academia. Millennial developments around convergence media culture, the rise of Internet television, the discourses of a new, “cinematic” prestige television canon have, among other factors, again thrown into sharp light the questionable status of the still young discipline’s relevance as an independent field of study in its own right. Television scholars Newman and Levine (2012) and Piper (2016) warn that the new legitimacy that both television culture and its study may gain in what is now often called the “Peak TV” era (Garber et al. 2015), comes at the price of ideologically problematic evaluative practices and dubious applications of film studies’ analytical methods and terminologies. Still others challenge this scepticism around the “aesthetic turn” (Lury 2016) by celebrating the uniquely televisual narrative and formal possibilities that recent shifts in television culture bring about (Mittell 2015), as well as by debating the ideological premise of aesthetics-sceptic stances (Zborowski 2016, Nannicelli 2016, Dasgupta 2012). This debate, which has had a structuring effect on television scholarship’s recent development, has then at stake the hierarchal status of television studies in relation to film studies, and as such is bound up with issues of power among academic disciplines.

Signalling the debate’s widening reach beyond academic circles is the public controversy the British prestige film magazine Sight and Sound stirred when publishing its annual Best Films list for 2017, which ranks the auteurist TV series Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) at its number two spot. This paper takes this controversy as its case study to examine the ramifications of the magazine’s editorial position toward the public outcry for the debate’s ongoing significance. Given Sight and Sound‘s historic status as bridge between academic and popular thinking about film for an audience of intellectual cinema aficionados, editor Nick James’ editorial in the February 2018 issue, which defends the inclusion of a TV series on the Best Films list, is bound up with the notions of territorialism and power struggles that have historically characterised these academic disciplines, now inscribed onto prestige film and television criticism. My inquiry into the controversy argues that while television’s recent convergences with other media, and its constant transformations as cultural institution and object of academic study, may allow for enlisting these processes as proof of film and television scholarship’s mutual permeability, the terms of these interactions continue to outline relations of power via evaluative boundaries.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 5A: Issues of Disciplinarity Chair: David Levente Palatinus

RESEARCH COMPLEXITY IN TELEVISION STUDIES Lothar Mikos - Film University Konrad-Wolf, Germany

In 2006 an article by Jason Mittell appeared in the journal The Velvet Light Trap, called “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television” which changed television research. It was the starting point of an increase in research in television drama series.

The terms complexity and complex narration made TV drama series more valuable for audiences and academic researchers.

Television studies in the 21st century are much more complex than in the last century. My paper will discuss some challenges for television studies in the era of convergence and de-convergence regarding audience studies, production studies, and also textual analysis. I will plead for an interdisciplinary and transnational television research and propose the formation of transnational research groups.

Television changes constantly, it’s a medium in transition. In the past three decades the media landscape has undergone a unique transformation. Digitalization and the integration of traditional media and telecommunication have allowed television programmes to be marketed and used on other technical platforms besides conventional television. The term convergence is used to describe significant and complex changes in the contemporary media landscape initiated by digitalization: “The current media developments are diverse. What we see are several parallel developments resulting in a higher level of complexity, with new alignments of networks, terminals, services and markets” (Fagerjord & Storsul 2007: 27). Convergence is used as a metaphor to describe these changes in a simple way, in other words, to reduce complexity. Nonetheless, maybe we can speak of a converged media environment of which television is an integral part. This converged media environment includes developments and changes on various levels and in various areas: 1) technology, 2) economy, 3) politics, 4) culture, and 5) social developments. Politics, industry and audiences/consumers are undergoing significant changes in convergent media environments. These changes are structurally the same all over the world, but there are significant differences in some concrete aspects of these changes in different countries and regions.

References: Fagerjord, Andreas and Storsul, Tanja (2007), ‘Questioning Convergence’, in Tanja Storsul and Dagny Stuedahl, (eds), Ambivalence towards Convergence. Digitalization and Media Change, Göteborg: Nordicom, pp.

19–31.

Jin, Dal Yong (2013), De-convergence of Global Media Industries. New York and London: Routledge.

Webster, J. G. (2014). The Marketplace of Attention. How Audiences Take Shape in a Digital Age. Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press.

The processes of convergence go hand in hand with processes of de-convergence (Jin 2013: 111-26). It’s a dialectical process.

Technological change leads to a multiplicity of channels and platforms which deliver audiovisual content. The fragmentation of television leads also to fragmented audiences. Diverse audiences use different media platforms to get television shows whenever and wherever they want. At the same time “the widening gap between limitless media and limited attention makes it a challenge for anything to attract an audience” (Webster 2014, 4). The fragmentation of audiences also has consequences for audience studies. It’s getting much more difficult for researchers to collect participants for focus groups on specific TV shows, because only very few shows attract large audiences.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 5B: Local and Global in Netflix and Prestige Drama Chair: Baerbel Goebel-Stolz

REASSERTING THE GAZE: TOURISM AND TRANSIENCE AS ‘PRESTIGE’ MODES OF ADDRESS IN TV DRAMA

RETHINKING TRANSNATIONAL TELEVISION IN THE AGE OF NETFLIX

Robert Watts - University of Manchester, UK

Mareike Jenner - Anglia Ruskin University, UK

In Visible Fictions, John Ellis (1982) famously drew a distinction between the spectatorial regimes of television’s distracted ‘glance’ and cinema’s more concentrated ‘gaze’. Ellis was writing at a time when smaller, low-resolution screens made for a starker aesthetic disparity between the two media than we find in today’s convergent media age. His construction speaks to a longestablished hierarchy of audio-visual forms that has only recently begun to break down: first through the emergence of so-called ‘high-end’ or ‘cinematic’ U.S. TV drama in the HBO mould; then through a transnational turn evidenced by the boom in ‘prestige’ international co-productions, and the emergence of global streaming platforms. Ellis’ ‘glance’ regime depended on the apparatus of broadcasting, where TV's domestic context and ‘flow’ organisation framed it as part of the background of everyday life, with a mode of address that assumed a nationally-rooted subject.

Though a range of digital broadcasters in the TV IV era remain bound by national broadcasting systems and by ideological projects of ‘the nation’ (see Mihelj 2011), Netflix’ publication model positions it as intensely transnational. This paper explores how Netflix places itself as transnational broadcaster, negotiating the dialectical relationship between the national and the transnational.

It outlines some of the strategies Netflix employs to manage this relationship without challenging how national media is organised.

To do this, the paper will focus on three significant aspects of Netflix’ transnationalism: its abandonment of the schedule and, thus, national time as structuring element, its publication model for in-house productions and its use of translation for these texts.

The various subjective possibilities aligned with cinematic theories of the ‘gaze’ were thus rarely applied to the study of television as a social process under the national broadcast paradigm. Scholarly interest in the legitimation of TV drama - in the wake of HBO and The Sopranos - frequently evoked Bourdieu (1984) and the ‘pure gaze’ that recognises works of art through the adoption of an 'aesthetic disposition’. This work, however, centred on industrial processes (such as HBO’s construction of a ‘quality’ brand) rather than dealing in textual aesthetics per se, the value of which remains a contentious debate in the field (see Jacobs and Peacock, 2013).

Yet, as Michele Hilmes (2014) argues, the construction of "new transnational viewing publics” demands fresh approaches to research, including a renewed emphasis on how textual forms might “interrogate the claims of nation”. This paper makes a case for gaze theory as a means to rethink television address in light of the transnational turn in prestige drama.

Looking first at nationally-rooted texts rich in local detail and idiom - Happy Valley (BBC, 2013-) and The Wire (HBO, 2002-2007) - I outline both series’ transnational appeal in terms of sociologist John Urry’s (1990) construct of a tourist gaze, that solicits an ‘authentic’ performance of place. Urry observed that the ability to travel, historically, functions as a marker of social status. Here, I suggest the tourist gaze as an extension of the Bourdieusian pure gaze, i.e. a particular disposition of the contemporary ‘quality’ TV audience, transnationally constituted. Then turning to markedly transnational texts, including Top of the Lake (BBC/Sundance TV, 2013-), Fortitude (Sky Atlantic, 2015) and The Honourable Woman (BBC/Sundance TV, 2014), I extend this disposition further to include a transient gaze, reflected in prestige texts that centre on characters uprooted, displaced from or existing in-between fixed national or cultural identities. In doing so I seek to reassert the utility of the ‘gaze’ and textual analysis, to draw a link between the Bourdieu-inflected scholarship of the HBO era and the volatile industrial and social contexts of transnational TV drama in the 23 streaming era.

National time has been an incredibly important factor in the organisation of schedules, often limiting the reach of transnational broadcasting. Netflix’ different organisational structures, relying heavily on its recommendation algorithm to establish entrance flow and insulated flow (see Perks 2014), allow for Netflix’ longform narrative formats to be integrated into national media systems in ways that have been impossible via satellite or cable transmission. The binge model is used by Netflix to publish its inhouse productions on the same date in all the 190 markets it operates in. Netflix’ strategy to capture the attention of transnational audiences and make transnational communication about its texts possible seems like a direct response to the immediacy of social media. Though this strategy makes texts transnationally available, this does not make them necessarily accessible. Because of this, Netflix implemented the Hermes project in 2017 to hurry translation of its texts, both through subtitling and dubbing. Translation is a way Netflix manages to assimilate into various national media systems by adapting to the norms that shape translation and often mitigate swearing or explicit references to sex (see Kuipers 2015).

Thus, this paper outlines Netflix’ three main strategies to integrate and assimilate itself into national media systems as transnational broadcaster. This has important implications for the way transnational broadcasting can be organised in a TV IV era.

Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 5B: Local and Global in Netflix and Prestige Drama Chair: Baerbel Goebel-Stolz

NETFLIX AND THE NATIONAL TELEVISION INDUSTRY Mike Wayne, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands

The global television industry has attracted a significant amount of scholarly attention in recent years as reality formats reorganize the transnational flow of television programming and digital viewing platforms like Netflix create new possibilities for global television audiences. Yet, the question of how these shifts impact industrial practices within national television industries remains contested. Some media industry scholars argue that the inability to properly regulate streaming video on-demand (SVOD) services presents serious threats to national broadcasters (Davis & Zboralska, 2017). Others argue that the arrival of SVOD and overthe-top (OTT) services highlights the tensions between the national orientations of broadcasters and the global aspirations of independent producers and distributors (Steemers, 2016). To date, however, little work has examined the ways in which multi-channel providers respond to such shifts in relation to the economic and regulatory realities of the local market. When this segment of the television industry is considered, the object of analysis is national pay-TV markets and multi-channel providers are addressed as a monolith (see Sanz & Crosbie, 2016). Given the changes within national pay-TV markets and the increasing demand for content to fill SVOD libraries, developing better understandings of multi-channel providers is particularly important as these understandings will provide theoretical and empirical insights that speak to the broader implications of the increasing interpenetration of local and global television industries.

Work Cited: Davis, C., & Zboralska, E. (2017). Transnational over-the-top media distribution as a business and policy disruptor: The case of Netflix in Canada. The Journal of Media Innovations, 4(1), 4–25.

Flint, J., & Ramachandran, S. (2017, March 24). Netflix: The monster that’s eating Hollywood.

Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/netflix-the-monster-thatseating-hollywood1490370059 Havens, T., Lotz, A. D., & Tinic, S. (2009). Critical media industry studies: A research approach. Communication, Culture & Critique, 2(2), 234–253.

Sanz, E., & Crosbie, T. (2016). The meaning of digital platforms: Open and closed television infrastructure. Poetics, (55), 76–89.

Steemers, J. (2016). International sales of UK television content: Change and continuity in “the space in between” production and consumption.

Television & New Media, 17(8), 734–753

As such, this exploratory research uses a “critical media industry studies” approach (Havens, Lotz, & Tinic, 2009) to complicate the dominant narrative of intractable conflict between global SVODs like Netflix and national television industries (see Flint & Ramachandran, 2017). Drawing on qualitative interview data with six executives working for the country’s largest multi-channel television providers, preliminary findings indicate that the Israeli television industry’s relationships with and attitudes towards Netflix are complex and often contradictory. For legacy providers, Netflix is simultaneously an additional option in an increasingly crowded local OTT market and a potential buyer of original content whose patronage will doubtlessly help mitigate the revenue loss caused by subscriber attrition. For local OTT providers who have yet to begin producing original content, the implications of Netflix’s role as competitor or partner remain less clear. Although attitudes vary with a variety of factors including market position and branding strategies, collectively, the industry responses to Netflix identified in this research reveal complex cultural and economic entanglements that call into question reductive “post-TV” arguments based on notions of digital disruption.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 6A: Re-thinking the Audience and Disciplinary Boundaries Chair: Elke Weissmann

EXPLORING AUDIENCE PREFERENCES IN A DEVELOPING COUNTRY CONTEXT: AN ANALYSIS OF VIEWER RESPONSE TO LOCAL AND FOREIGN PROGRAMMES AND ADVERTISEMENTS IN JAMAICA

COMFORTING DIGRESSIONS: THE APPEAL OF TELEVISION’S PLACEHOLDER EMOTIONS Kerr Castle - University of Glasgow, UK

Claire Grant, Arlene Bailey - University of West Indies, Jamaica Alphonso Ogbuehi - Clayton State University, Atlanta, USA This paper is concerned with viewer motivation and invites necessary (re)consideration of our engagements with the small screen. Specifically, it calls to question the appeal of television to those viewers in need of comfort, who utilise TV as a substitution of sorts; as a way to temporarily displace concerns (large or small), to feel more, to encourage alternative modes of thinking or being, to be ‘social’, or to knowingly care for oneself. Focusing on the medium’s temporality and its suitability as a site for exciting placeholder emotions, this paper considers the significance of viewer identity and subjectivity (i.e. where they are in their lives in that moment) in determining how they then prescribe their TV viewing. Drawing on original data from the Comfort TV Research Project (an audience study designed and conducted in collaboration with the NHS), this paper argues that television can be a valuable form of emotional digression. Exploring intimate uses of television driven by the specific needs of study participants (family units, first-year undergraduate students, and hospital patients), it proposes that the ‘step aside’ towards television and our preferred shows can often serve as more than consolation.

Complicating traditional notions of value, study data indicates the potential for more profound, nuanced and meaningful small screen experiences; moments of respite which might result in enduring feelings of comfort, strength and renewal long after viewing.

Recognizing the dynamic global media environment, diversity in content and audiences, and socio-cultural influences, this paper explores audience perceptions of local and foreign television programming and advertisements as aired through cable and/or free to air distribution platforms and geo-cultural contexts in a developing country.

There has been ongoing debate and interest in the implications, inter-relationships and influence of local and foreign content on television, and the context in which viewers interact with the content. Researchers have examined perspectives on this related to viewer interest, messages and influences, culture and national identity. The context of the programming and related components such as advertising is important in relation to discussions of globalization and localization in the television industry in several markets. These are key concepts in the discussion about the dynamic media environment, industry sustainability and audience research.

This paper builds on the development of a conceptual framework which focuses on the relationships between the effectiveness outcomes from advertisement placements on television in economies that have programming mixes that are distinctly local and foreign. In these economies populations have dominant and distinct culturally poised audiences interacting with diverse cultural content. The concept of cultural context congruence is introduced to explore how the cultural origin of television programming, whether it is local or foreign, has a bearing on advertising effectiveness based on programme and advertisement context congruency as decoded by audiences in a developing country. Audience Attitude Theory and the Schema-Congruity Framework are employed in investigating the impact of the cultural context congruence on advertising effectiveness.

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A qualitative approach adopted for this paper is part of a multimethod study which explores the association between cultural context congruency and advertising effectiveness on television audiences in a small, open, emerging economy. In this study, focus group participants who consume primarily cable-based and/or free-to-air transmissions provide feedback on their viewing experiences, and to specific programme and advertising content shown in focus group sessions. The objective is to summarize audience impressions of the dynamics associated with viewing content on cable (that is, foreign television stations) and content on non-cable (that is, local television stations). Investigations using focus groups with television viewers, seeks to unearth expectations, desires and interpretations of the content based on the country of origin of the station and gain insights into how advertising is absorbed based on the platform that it is on (that is foreign or local television station) and the programme context that it is immersed in (that is, foreign or local).

Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 6A: Re-thinking the Audience and Disciplinary Boundaries Chair: Elke Weissmann

THE LIVING SYSTEM IS THE MESSAGE – TELEVISION INDUSTRIES EVOLUTION AS THE SITE OF STUDY Baerbel Goebel-Stolz - Coventry University, UK

Recently, I was allowed to share my thoughts on the state of television, its industries, audiences, and scholarship, in a blog post on the Critical Studies in Television website. Television studies have always set themselves apart not by their subject of study, TV after all has been studied in many fields, but by their innate multimethodological nature. Derek Kompare tweeted that “media studies, forged out of the response to fascism […], and the response to post-60s politics, […] is due for some radical revision. […]

(Kompare,2017)” remarking on the fact that inter-disciplinarity might be pushed past existing limits. The environments he referenced as essential in shaping media and television studies at the onset were driven and motivated by socio-economical and socio-political dimensions, cultural concerns and political need.

And while all of these elements play into media studies to this day, the industrial components, much more than before, have become essential to making sense of media artefacts, their circulation, and reception.

This is not to say that the study of these elements is new, but that the way in which they are explored has dramatically shifted. As a result, media scholarship, one not yet past the hierarchical divide of high and low culture, has been forced to analyze its own ability to make sense of quantifiable industry data, audience response input and economical dimensions. They now do this less bound by politics than ongoing market needs for economic growth. As a result, academics in the field are required to think about media studies beyond updating individual theories pertaining to subcategories, reviewing the maintaining disconnect of media studies disciplines proper. The post-digital, for example, is ever present in media industries studies, but in its own right stays as a theoretical complex in philosophy’s hand. I wondered if it “could it be now, in response to the purity of capitalist endeavours, maybe, or the globality of media access, exchange, and exhibition” that a redirect would become feasible, shareable, and sustainable that could marry media studies traditions as of now divided.

Not inviting a purely economic, nor a purely discursive model, not a sociology driven model of analysis, and certainly not a psychoanalytical methodology, but revisit instead a television studies essential, the circuit of culture, is to redirect the focus of media studies. The focus will then be on the change, or as Kompare noted in his thread “the systems” rather than the moving pieces.

This focus may best be defined around affect, connecting affective labor, post-digital environs, and the circuit of culture to reshape the academic approach to television studies as it is, allowing for the medium to become less relevant than its eco-system.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 6B: Panel: Shifting Patterns of Production Chair: Anna Zoellner

DISTRIBUTION AND LOCALIZATION STRATEGIES FOR FOREIGN READY-MADE TV SHOWS. AN ITALIAN (AND INDUSTRIAL) PERSPECTIVE

DEATH OF THE AUTHOR ON THE FACTORY FLOOR Helen Littleboy - Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

Luca Barra - University of Bologna, Italy 50 or so years after Barthes 'killed off' the author, this paper opens up questions of authorship in relation to contemporary industrialised factual television practice. It draws on my current industry-based practice research, as a television executive producer, with particular reference to my recent acclaimed Grierson-nominated television series, Hospital for BBC (2017). As such, building on my previous work on the ‘fixed rig’ documentary form (Littleboy, 2013), the first detailed investigation of the impact of fixed, robotic cameras on documentary TV production, and employing evidence including from personal practice to uphold the argument for authorship as collaboration (Caldwell, 2008), this paper will ask, in a context where industrialisation increasingly displaces the documentary director as author, what signs of life remain for authorship on the 'factory floor'?

In the Italian context, many television products come from a foreign origin: diffused or broadcast together with national productions, following a long tradition, they need to change their nature through dubbing, and consequently become at least partially different texts.

In the transfer between different countries, a wide range of “national mediation” processes takes place, influencing – in a direct, or more subtle and indirect, way – the definition of the product in the destination country, its life cycle, the reception and success of its genre, the circulation of similar texts, the public image of the broadcaster, etc. Moreover, in recent years, with the increased number of imports as well as of possible channels and platforms, and the emergence of global players as Netflix and Amazon, the multiplication of choices and paths has complicated, instead of reducing, the relevance of “hidden” cultural intermediaries.

The agitated theories of authorship provoked by Barthes' iconic 1967 intervention, The Death of the Author, have done little to trouble the majority of those engaged in industrial documentary production. Nonetheless, there is a longstanding discourse of disquiet amongst British television documentary makers, particularly directors, around the exercise of authorship. This paper will explore why such expressions of anxiety have been linked to the introduction of new technologies, from the lightweight ‘point and shoot’ digital video cameras associated with docusoaps of the late 1990s to the ‘fixed rig’ remote robotic cameras borrowed from Big Brother after 2010.

Audio-visual translation is the main device of this mediation, adopting domesticating techniques, modifying jokes and cultural references, and trying to reduce possible misunderstandings and to increase the success of the product through some peculiar phases (translation, adaptation, dubbing, post-production) with their own roles, logics and hierarchies. Together with these direct interventions on the core of a television ready-made, Italian broadcasters also modify the text and its context through several other processes of national appropriation (in a sort of “Italianization”): rights acquisition, scheduling and promotion. In both cases, the intermediary role played by production habits, routines and professionals involved in the national distribution of international TV products becomes a space of constant negotiation of real and supposed meanings, hopefully building paths of national success. And it becomes even more effective (despite its apparent “transparency”) with day-and-date distribution practices, global volume and output deals, channels and platforms directly operated by global players: as the quantity of the television offer reaches its peak, national mediations play a fundamental role in approaching TV content to the viewer (and vice versa), highlighting what is relevant, building a success.

The context for this study is a transformation in the economy and ecology of television broadcast and distribution, where programmes are not only intrinsic to the branding of the Channels that commission and exhibit them (Johnson, 2012) but may become global brands themselves. I will argue that, as a consequence, in the era termed TVIV, authorship of televisual content has become a site of both increased value and contestation between collaborators within the documentary production process.

Adopting a media production and distribution studies approach, and presenting the results of a years-long field research on Italian television industries (on dubbing, scheduling, acquisition, marketing), the paper highlights some of the (evolving) main issues of this constant professional dialogue/negotiation, presenting some particularly relevant case histories that can explain well how the global circulation of a ready-made TV shows is deeply reframed for national/local audiences by major and minor variations, professional assumptions on expected audiences and their habits, working routines and simplifications.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 6B: Panel: Shifting Patterns of Production

Screening

Chair: Anne Zoellner

Chair: Matthew Pateman

NO SUCH THING AS ‘JUST CLOTHES’: SERIAL COSTUMING STRATEGIES IN TELEVISION Josette Wolthuis - Warwick University, UK

Costume on television is a largely overlooked yet central aspect of how viewers make sense of the characters and narrative in each shot, scene, episode and season of a series. Whilst there is a considerable and growing body of work on fashion and costume in cinema, scholars have appeared more reticent to discuss clothing on television. A shift has begun to take place since high-profile series such as Mad Men (AMC 2007-2015) in the US and Downton Abbey (ITV 2010-2015) in the UK drew significant attention to their costuming. This is, however, by no means new – Miami Vice (NBC 1984-1990) started this trend decades ago. Moreover, whilst in the media and amongst viewers there is a growing interest in the iconic costumes of period dramas, fantasy shows and fashioncentred programming (as Warner [2014] writes in the only book on this topic), the majority of television output still features people dressed in costumes that approximate everyday casual or professional dress as we know it. Because they look like ‘just clothes’, it remains unnoticed how these costumes, too, were constructed for the screen and authored by a costume designer. I argue that in both categories costume and fashion form a key component of how television makes meaning, and that this is especially crucial in terms of seriality. Television scholarship on narrative, style and aesthetics would benefit from closer attention to costuming – particularly since new technologies make textures more visible than ever before. In this paper, I will trace some of the assumptions about the medium that have discouraged viewers and scholars to discuss or even notice costumes—television as a ‘window onto the world’; television and fashion as too commercial or frivolous; low-quality images; mere focus on narrative—and show how new developments in our understanding of television demand scholarly attention to costume design. I will then discuss the use of several different costuming strategies in crime and legal dramas in relation to their respective serial structures, focusing on the British dramas Broadchurch (ITV 2013-2017), The Fall (BBC 2013-2016) and Scott & Bailey (ITV 2013-2016), with reference to my interviews with their costume designers, as juxtaposed to more fashion-focused series (e.g. USA Network’s Suits 2011–).

Television costume is a key cultural expression that is now shown on our screens in great detail and is long overdue for close reading.

© BBC

HOSPITAL (BBC, 2017), Helen Littleboy is screening an episode of Hospital, her awardwinning TV series. In a paper given in Panel 6B, she is reflecting on issues of authorship in contemporary factual television production.

Here, she give us the opportunity to scrutinise the issues by examining this episode. The screening will be embedded in a quick contextual presentation by Helen, and will be followed by a Q&A.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 7A: Contexts of Production Chair: Lothar Mikos

INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS OF TV PRODUCTION: MAKING FACTUAL PROGRAMMES IN THE UK AND GERMANY

TELEVISION: A MEDIUM WITHOUT ITS OWN LEGAL VOICE Inês Rebanda Coelho - Universidad de Minho, Portugal

Anna Zoellner - University of Leeds, UK

Despite all the technological evolution that television has experienced in the last few years, there are several countries which, legally, do not see television as an independent medium from all the other fields that define the audiovisual world. At a first glance, it may not appear as something worrisome, especially because of the autonomy and new television distribution and production methods which have been arising. However, despite this being true in the USA, the same can’t be said about several European countries.

There are many delays, which can be seen in the evolution of television contents and formats in a lot of countries compared with the USA, and the law is one of the main causes. All the audiovisual works are seen, treated and protected in the same way, and since Europe follows a tradition of author’s protection, this is one of the questions that has brought more problems. The authors of television content change from country to country, even inside the EU, which, in addition to the misappropriation of intellectual property, may be causing damage in various television formats in artistic, economic and cultural terms, especially in countries with small industries.

Although television production, distribution and consumption increasingly transcend national borders, nation states remain – for now – a useful analytical category for studying the relationship between structure and agency in television production. But it is important to investigate these transnational flows and interconnections and how they shape and respond to national production cultures.

Based on an ethnographic study combining participant observation and interviews, this paper compares the positioning of factual programme producers in Great Britain and Germany within the global television marketplace and describes how it defines their day-to-day production priorities and activities. In both countries there has been a shift from a predominantly public-service orientated broadcasting environment to a commercialised, competitive and consumer-orientated television industry, which carries implications for production practice and programming. As a result the independent production sector has gained greater significance but it is also particularly vulnerable to commercial pressures. This paper examines the experience of British and German television workers in the independent sector and explores the way in which changed industry structures interact with traditional production cultures.

The purpose of this research is to portray the inadequacy of the European legislation to the technological evolution which television has gone through, as well as of society itself, either as an audience or as a user of works made by third parties. Even with the contact that the creatives have been establishing with fans and the practices of the most gifted of them in the artistic fields, who create more and more works through the ones they admire, there is a thin line between tolerance and the illegality of some acts. To do so, the main inadequacies of the European legislation and a possible solution to it will be presented. A solution which may reside in the blockchain, the latest technological revolution, or in a derivation of it. An approach to Television Studies and the social point of view about authorship and the industrial reality of a television work will also be made and how they distance themselves from the law. The research methodology used can be summarized thusly: the intensive study of each EU country legislation, the directives of harmonization and other legal material; the observation of literary material related to authorship and to the industrial reality in Television Studies and fields linked to sociological studies; the analysis of the use of the blockchain to solve legal problems and facilitate the access and use of works made by other people.

It considers both cultural contexts and structural conditions television producers experience and how they influence the selection and framing of programme content. The paper investigates the influence of cultural and regulatory particularities, including language, cultural proximity, licensing regulation and public funding, and links them to different practices concerning international collaboration and sales strategies in the two countries. Finally, it relates these observations to developments within the factual television genre and highlights the – still relatively minor yet important – influence of the international

This study aims to alert to the necessity of updating the law, of its readjustment to the industrial reality of the field that this law defends, to the needs of its society and of the work’s creators.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 7A: Contexts of Production Chair: Lothar Mikos

‘COMPLEX, OR COMMERCIAL, STORYTELLING'?: THE CORPORATE BUSINESS OF CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION DRAMA John Cook - Glasgow Caledonian University, UK There has been much scholarly focus in recent years on 'complex storytelling' within contemporary television drama, particularly in respect of US 'long-form' series. Less considered is the wider media business context against which these developments are taking place. This paper will provide an overview of the macroeconomics underpinning contemporary drama production, arguing that it is important also to understand ongoing changes in form and aesthetics and the shift to 'high-end' in relation to increasing conglomeration and consolidation within the US media business environment such that today, only a handful of US-based media megacorporations dominate ownership and financing of some of the world's leading entertainment content, with TV drama being a particular driver of growth and success. A specially prepared factsheet will be given out to conference delegates providing a concise up-to-date summary of the current media global 'ownership & revenues' picture and the paper will consider Rupert Murdoch's announcement in December 2017 of his plans to sell his entire Fox entertainment assets to Disney (subject to US regulatory approval), ostensibly on the grounds that traditional media corporations like his can no longer compete 'to scale' in terms of production with the rise of SVOD companies like Netflix and Amazon. Picking up this theme, the paper will conclude with an examination of the rise of the new 'tech' companies in screen content production (the so-called 'FAANG' group) and particularly the current much-discussed position of Netflix as 'gamechanger' and 'disruptor' of 'old' media production, asking whether its current business model can prove to be viable and sustainable over the longer term.

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 7B: Taking stock, Catching up, Moving forward: Reflections on TV Scholarship in TVIV Chair: David Levente Palatinus

I’LL BE THERE FOR YOU… IN TVIV: TELEVISION SCHOLARSHIP AND FRIENDS IN TVIV Simone Knox, University of Reading, UK Kai Hanno Schwind , Westerdals Oslo ACT, Norway This panel wants to take the opportunity to reflect on the challenges and opportunities of undertaking television scholarship in TVIV. We are interested in working through what may be some of the transitions and some of the continualities of our object of study, as well as what may be some of the achievements and some of the blind spots of our discipline. Our case studies include a sitcom that has recently been trending on Twitter almost a quarter of a century after its first broadcast, drama series whose 1980s narratives are continually being ‘overtaken’ by current political events, and a web series whose methods of production and distribution call for new methodological approaches. Our papers are particularly interested in the dynamic ways with which television scholarship engages with fan, press and political discourses.

Television indeed is and always has been changing. However, one constant for almost 25 years now has been the presence of Friends on a (TV and/or laptop) screen. Friends is indisputably one of the most significant television shows of all time: it has won numerous awards, and has been included in a number of ‘best TV series of all time’ lists. Its cultural impact has been significant, launching catchphrases that range from the oft-repeated ‘How you doin’?’ and ‘We were on a break!’ to the more obscure ‘Pivot!’ and ‘Paper!

Snow! A Ghost!’ It inspired a popular hairstyle, and its theme song is instantly recognized by millions. It has been referenced in sitcoms including Curb Your Enthusiasm and Peep Show, drama series like Weeds and Law & Order, feature films such as The Terminal, plays such as Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, and music videos such as Jay-Z’s ‘Moonlight’. A cornerstone of NBC’s Must-See TV scheduling strategy, it has been shown on a number of channels across the globe ever since, with the streaming rights to the series having been acquired by Netflix in 2015, where it has found a new wave of – at times, critical – engagement. Not bad for a multi-camera sitcom.

And yet, scholarly attention to Friends to date has been strikingly scant, consisting so far largely of a handful of discussions and brief references. Reflecting on this absence, this paper will draw on our co-authored ongoing research to sketch out what broader insights television scholarship can stand to gain from finally catching up with Friends. As a TVIII show that’s still very much present in TVIV, how can it help us think through transformation and continuity? To what extent has the series’ comedic trajectory aged? What does its enduring popularity (with a regular stream of ‘clickbait’ articles promising revelatory facts) and recent social media backlash tell us about its place in present/future television culture and scholarship?

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Critical Studies in Television Conference State of Play: Television Scholarship in ‘TVIV’ Programme Details – Panel Speakers and Abstracts

Panel 7B: Taking stock, Catching up, Moving forward: Reflections on TV Scholarship in TVIV Chair: David Levente Palatinus

KEEPING UP WITH KIM-JONG UN: THE CHALLENGE OF RESEARCHING CURRENT TELEVISION PROGRAMMES AND CONTEMPORARY CULTURE IN THE TVIV ERA

RE-THINKING RECEPTION STUDIES AND TEXTUAL ENGAGEMENT IN THE ERA OF SOCIAL MEDIA Gry C Rustad - University of Oslo, Norway Anders Olof Larsson - Westerdals Oslo ACT, Norway

Anna Varadi - University of Reading, UK

Skam (2015-2017) is a Norwegian web series produced by the Norwegian Public Service Broadcaster (NRK) focused on a group of upper secondary students in the Norwegian capital. Each of the four seasons followed one school semester and featured a new point-of-view character. Skam was told through short video clips, the characters’ Instagram updates and screen grabs of their messenger chats. The series was distributed online in ‘real time’ on webpages such as the official skam.p3.no and a series of Instagram accounts. During the third season the show propelled into an international hit. Despite lack of international distribution, Skam managed to gain a substantial fan following all over the world going well beyond the Scandinavian context. The show is being remade in France, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Germany and the USA. This paper will trace how Skam fandom spread on Instagram, combining this approach with an exploration of how fandom engagement and growth is facilitated by aesthetics. Utilizing a cross-disciplinary approach, we combine analysis of quantitative data from Instagram with textual analysis of Skam. We explore how Skam’s online popularity growth aligns with the show’s aesthetic (narrative and stylistic) choices. The study will introduce and develop what we term quantitative reception aesthetics as a method as described below.

Many recent American television programmes have focused on timely, current social issues such as racial tension, transgender rights, or illegal immigration. Prime time programmes such as The Fosters (Freeform, 2013-2018), Scandal (ABC, 2012-2018), Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, 2005-), or Black Lightning (The CW, 2018-) have made these issues central to their plot at the same time as real-life action is taken by American lawmakers and public figures about them. As such, many contemporary television programmes’ plotlines exist in juxtaposition to and in cross-pollination with nearsimultaneous (real) news and current events regarding the same issues. In addition, newly emerged/emerging (digital) technologies which drive the consumption of TVIV, such as social media, are also central to bringing the constantly developing news cycles of the twenty-first century to the public. Thus, these current events are received through the same channels of technology as the contemporary television programmes fictionalising them.

Consequently, the consumption of (fictional) television as well as television scholarship itself are constantly overloaded by this excess of (developing/current) information. This paper reflects on the possible challenges faced by television scholars working on recent programmes amidst this news cycle, asking, how may these newly arisen pressures of ‘currency’ impact television scholarship and/or television scholars? Furthermore, can TV scholarship bring a meaningful contribution to broader (social, political, etc.) discourses on these current events?

Livingstone and Das (2013) have suggested that “while there has been a general recognition that it is possible to converge these methods [qualitative and quantitative] in some projects, very few have actually succeeded in such an attempt”. This paper combines textual analysis of aesthetics and quantitative, big data research.

The study thus demonstrates how converging qualitative and quantitative methods is not only possible - but certainly key to understand audience growth and engagement with television texts on social media.

These ideas are explored through the example of up-to-date research on recent televisual representations of contemporary anxieties regarding a possible nuclear apocalypse, depicted in contemporary television programmes set in the 1980s in the final period of the Cold War. To this end, the paper explores narratives about nuclear fear in The Americans (FX, 2013-2018), The Goldbergs (ABC, 2013-), and Stranger Things (Netflix, 2016-), and reflects on the challenges which ongoing developments in United States - North Korea relations have presented for researching these programmes’ representation of Cold War-era conflict and nuclear tension. The recent escalation of nuclear tension between these two countries has frequently been compared to the nuclear tension between America and the Soviet Union during the Cold War in the press. Ongoing, unpredictable developments regarding the current tension, such as the accidental triggering of a (false) missile alert in Hawaii in January 2018, have made it difficult to commit to firm research statements regarding the state of (political, social, nuclear) conflict in contemporary America.

Through this example, the paper aims to interrogate the importance and challenge of ‘currency’ for television scholars and scholarship in the TVIV era.

This paper wishes to address how new distribution practices and social media offers the field of television studies new possible methods for reception studies. As television spectatorship is made increasingly visible on social media, we seek to explore textual engagement empirically by applying mixed methods. This was done by first archiving all Instagram posts carrying the #skam hashtag – indicating content related to the show under discussion. These data were then made subject to a series of analyses in order to detail the growth of popularity – identifying, among other things, what specific moments during the four-season series that emerged as especially poignant in relation to those engaging with the Skam episodes. In so doing, we not only address issues of reception aesthetics – but also issues of ‘power within the hashtag’ – what users emerge as particularly influential in terms of having their Instagram posts ‘liked’ and commented.

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Upcoming Events at Edge Hill University Buffy Comes of Age: Aesthetics, technologies and politics in the TV industry 21 years after she first slayed us Professor Matthew Pateman Since Buffy the Vampire Slayer first aired 21 years ago, there have been huge changes in the ways that television dramas are made, distributed, consumed and analysed. In his inaugural lecture, Professor Matthew Pateman will identify the important aspects of Buffy’s emergence as an influential and groundbreaking popular cultural product in the late 20th century.

Charting the ongoing influence the series had on TV drama, Professor Pateman will explore the content and format decisions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the context of the structure of the media industry, the appearance of new forms of media, as well as globalised transmedial franchises and policy issues. The lecture will highlight the complex, serious and important work of studying popular culture.

©Travis Falligant

Thursday 18th October 6.00pm Creative Edge

Resisting the notion of the ‘TV auteur’ (not allowing all the discussion to be dominated by the intentions and ideas of the show’s Executive Producer, Joss Whedon) Professor Pateman will insist on Buffy’s status as mass-mediated public art. The inaugural seeks to challenge one of Whedon’s own creations, who once stated upon discovering a television in someone’s room “Woah, Giles has got a TV; he’s shallow like us.”

Professor Matthew Pateman joined Edge Hill University as the Head of Media in 2017. His eclectic research interests include 20th and 21st century fiction and poetry, avant-garde film and documentary, critical theory, and popular culture. His recent publication Joss Whedon (Manchester University Press, 2018), chronicling the life and work of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator, will be launched by the publishers at this event.

Programme: 5.30pm Registration and Refreshments 6.00pm Lecture 7.00pm Q&A 7.15pm Wine and Canapés Tickets: Free Booking: ehu.ac.uk/events

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book at: ehu.ac.uk/events

Women in Film and TV A masterclass with Heidi Thomas Dubbed the ‘Queen of primetime TV drama’, Heidi Thomas is a multi-award winning screenwriter, producer and playwright. She is best known as the creator of the high-profile BBC TV series Call the Midwife and for her TV adaptation of the classic novel, Little Women.

Heidi’s writing reflects on matters of public and social discussion and her television work regularly achieves record-breaking audiences. Her creative ability to make strong connections with her audience, especially with themes that address issues such as community life, families, health and education, has made her one of the most in demand television screen writers.

Little Women, 2017 © BBC/Playground

Wednesday 28th November 3.00pm Creative Edge

During her 34-year career, Liverpool-born Heidi has received numerous awards for her work, including best writer at both the UK Royal Television Society and UK Broadcasting Press Guild awards. She was also nominated for two BAFTA television awards and received the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain award for best TV series for Cranford. In 2012, the annual UK Women in Film and Television Awards presented her with the Technicolor writing award in recognition of her contribution to the industry. In 2013, Edge Hill University awarded Heidi Thomas with an Honorary Doctorate in Literature.

Heidi will be in conversation with Edge Hill’s Professor Roger Shannon, discussing her writing and producing career in the context of women in film and TV, as well the centenary of women’s suffrage.

Programme: 2.30pm Registration and Refreshments 3.00pm In Conversation 4.30pm Refreshments and Networking Tickets: Free Booking: ehu.ac.uk/events

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Supported by Edge Hill University, Research Investment Fund, The Institute for Creative Enterprise (ICE), The Critical Studies in Television editorial team and the ECREA Television Studies Team