Abstract

As online TV delivery disrupts conventional TV broadcasting and unbundles TV cable channels, allowing consumers to choose programs and TV brands more directly, hit content is “king” more than ever before. This dissertation offers a new analysis of Canadian English-language TV drama content’s failure to mature into a popular genre or robust economic sector since its introduction in the 1960s, and suggests ways that the Canadian English-language TV drama value chain might be strategically adjusted in response to global market disruption, by strengthening the development phase. The problem is approached with two methodologies: value chain analysis and qualitative field research. Findings identify weak links in the value chain and propose that the Canadian English-language TV drama content model is structurally flawed and has inhibited maturation of the sector. The study theorizes a TV drama value chain composed of 3 functional segments (develop, produce, distribute) and identifies the root of the Canadian drama problem as the creation phase, known in TV as development, analogous to the R&D phase in other industries. The theorization explains why decades of policy attention and subsidies targeted to the production phase have not substantially improved domestic or global market performance of Canadian English-language TV drama. Moreover, the reframing reveals that development and distribution are functionally linked, while the production phase is the most separate. Theorization and field research concur that a strong imperative for financial returns is essential for successful creative results, from the earliest moments of development. Conversely, a weak link to monetization negatively impacts asset creation, impairing the development phase and, in the case of Canadian English-language TV drama, inhibits its capability to compete effectively in a 21st-century drama attention economy that increasingly rewards creative excellence. Interviews with stakeholders occupying elite development positions in the Canadian and Hollywood TV drama industry confirm an urgency to upgrade development to foster transformation of Canada’s TV drama model, from one purposed for domestic supply to one driven by global demand, and in so doing, future-proof Canadian TV drama for the digital age. Against the backdrop of Canada’s unique geo-cultural position vis a vis the U.S., characterized by brain drain of high-performing Canadian TV drama creators to Hollywood and attempts by Canadian English-language TV drama to compete with Hollywood hits, this research contributes to debates on cluster upgrading, local-global linkages, and economic diasporas that focus on value capture of highly skilled professionals who seek career acceleration in global escalator regions. Findings are applicable to any nation upgrading domestic creative industries which, like TV drama, are characterized by an imperative for innovation excellence in R&D-intensive global value chains.

Highlights

  • At this writing, media is undergoing its most significant shift in nearly 600 years, since the invention of the printing press in the 1450s (Carr, 2010)

  • In an industry much written about, yet under-theorized, this study offers a new analysis of Canadian TV drama by reframing the TV drama manufacturing process in three unique segments, which leads to isolating a new root of the Canadian drama problem: the development phase

  • 2.0 Introduction The story of the development phase of Canadian English-language TV drama begins in this chapter, with a critical review of existing knowledge bearing on the dissertation’s core argument, that weakness in Canadian TV drama can be located in the development phase of the value chain

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Summary

Introduction

Media is undergoing its most significant shift in nearly 600 years, since the invention of the printing press in the 1450s (Carr, 2010). The goal of the field study was to uncover dynamics in the case of the previously unexplored arena of the development phase of prime time, Canadian English-language TV drama. It stayed authentic by focusing on the perspectives of on-theground TV drama development practitioners, informants who had been rarely studied. Given a business endeavor which is, above all, creator-driven, and given that the globally dominant cluster for of drama creation is Hollywood, a long established destination for Canadian creators, issues of Canada Hollywood linkages were found to be top-of-mind for the informants in this study Unprecedented competition for consumer attention is further complicated, as platforms and geographic boundaries blur, making discoverability of all content, not just Canadian content, a key issue for the global TV industry, as the disruption accelerates (O’Brien, 2015)

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