Programme Makers Research Articles

Decolonising public service television in Aotearoa New Zealand: telling better stories about Indigenous rurality

In settler-colonial countries like Aotearoa New Zealand, television programmes about rurality are fundamentally entwined with the nation’s colonial history, but how this context impacts on locally made, public service television content and production is seldom examined. Utilising data collected from interviews with programme makers and a novel bi-cultural friendship pair methodology, we examine how a high-rating mainstream programme, Country Calendar, conceptualises and delivers stories about Indigenous Māori and consider the extent to which these stories represent a decolonising of television narratives about rurality. The findings highlight the importance of incorporating Indigenous voices and values, the impact of structural limitations and staffing constraints on public service television’s decolonising aspirations, and challenges reconciling settler-colonialism with the show’s well-established ‘rosy glow’. While rural media are often overlooked by communication scholars, our study demonstrates the contributions they might make to the larger task of decolonising storytelling about national identity.

‘How the Music was Made’: Television, musicology and BBC Four

This article focuses on BBC Four’s original music programming, considering documentaries which, according to the channel’s commissioning guidelines, ‘tak[e] a musicology approach’ to give audiences a ‘privileged view’ of ‘how the music was made’. It focuses on two case studies: Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein (2017) and Being Beethoven (2020) . Drawing upon original interviews with key production personnel for each series, this article explores the roles of music scholars in the television production process. It examines how musicologists are engaged with a production, what roles they undertake, and the value of their work for programme makers.

Public value of community media in Austria

This article explores the public value of community media in Austria. Though they fulfil various important functions in civil society, they do not enjoy the same legislative recognition and financial funding like other public-value-generating broadcasters do. For this study five normative functions have been developed to measure the community media’s public value: the articulation function, the participation function, the complementary function, the media literacy function and the strategies in media convergence function. In thirteen focus groups with members of fifteen Austrian community media, the strong institutionalization of the sector became just as apparent as the existence of a commonly shared self-perception. The normative functions are strongly anchored in the daily routine of the participating programme makers. So, community media in Austria clearly generate public value.

Analysis of childhood overweight and obesity in Namibia using spatio-temporal quantile interval models

The global prevalence of overweight (including obesity) in children under 5 years of age was 7% in 2012, and it is expected to rise to 11% by the year 2025. The main objective of this study was to fit spatio-temporal quantile interval regression models for childhood overweight (including obesity) in Namibia from 2000 to 2013 using fully Bayesian inference implemented in R-INLA package in R version 3.5.1. All the available Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) datasets for Namibia since 2000 were used in this study. Significant determinants of childhood overweight (including obesity) ranged from socio-demographic factors to child and maternal factors. Child age and preceding birth interval had significant nonlinear effects on childhood overweight (including obesity). Furthermore, we observed significant spatial and temporal effects on childhood overweight (including obesity) in Namibia between 2000 and 2013. To achieve the World Health Organisation (WHO) global nutrition target 2025 in Namibia, the existing scaling-up nutrition programme and childhood malnutrition policy makers in this country may consider interventions based on socio-demographic determinants, and spatio-temporal variations presented in this paper.

From Tory Boy to #sadmanonatrain: Great British Railway Journeys and the hard and soft masculinities of Michael Portillo

Before 2005, Michael Portillo was a reviled populist, right-wing British Conservative politician. Seemingly, he is a now a mellowed national treasure due largely to his approachable, friendly, prolific series of travelogues, Great British Railway Journeys (2010–present). This multi-series documentary has been a remarkable BBC success: delivering upbeat music, dynamic camera work, a repetitive format, rosy-tinted Victoriana and celebratory subject matter, the programme makers ensure that the programme is feel-good, cosy, nostalgic and soothing. But Portillo’s political inclinations are apparent: Portillo, sometimes quite subtly, expresses consistently his passion for free enterprise, for the supposed benefits of historical colonialism, for the monarchy, for the military and for social liberalism. A believer in an enterprise-encouraging small state and in personal liberty and social mobility, Portillo’s politics chime in directly with the current thinking of the Conservative Party leadership. In short, the apparently benign travelogue series promotes Portillo’s mainstream post-Thatcherite British Conservatism: an analysis of the ubiquitous programme’s understated but clear Conservatism counters right-wing accusations about the BBC’s alleged leftist bias.

FUTURES on Air: Community radio and public engagement

FUTURES on Air was a public engagement project delivered as part of FUTURES2020, a European Researchers’ Night event, which consisted of a series of co-produced radio conversations between community programme makers and researchers, which was broadcast across stations in the southwest of England, November 2020. FUTURES on Air explored the role of community media, specifically community radio, in relation to alternative forms of public engagement with researchers, and as impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

CRITICAL THINKING EMBEDDEDNESS IN HIGHER EDUCATION PROGRAMMES

Aim. The aim of this research is to examine how critical thinking is reflected in Lithuanian higher education study programmes and what conceptual model(s) of critical thinking are used by study programme makers.
 Methods. The subject of the study encompasses 8 higher education study programmes and their subjects. They are analysed based on a constructed conceptual framework, which defines 9 critical thinking skills and 18 critical thinking dispositions.
 Results. Analysis, evaluation and decision making are the most common critical thinking skills embedded in the goals of a study course and its learning outcomes. Explanation, interpretation and making inferences are less pronounced. Dispositions are listed rarely and in quite an indistinct way. Only open-mindedness and honesty have clear expression and statement in study programmes, though to a lesser extent. Dispositions such as concern for every person, inquisitiveness and flexibility are very fragmented.
 Conclusions. For the meantime, critical thinking is neither reflected equally and coherently in all parts of study programmes – course goals, content, described methods and learning outcomes – nor clear conceptual models of critical thinking can be detected.
 Research restrictions. The policy of the colleges and universities on providing the descriptions of study programmes and syllabuses publicly, limits their accessibility. Due to the sampling of study programmes, the research represents only selected study programmes.
 Practical application. The created framework may be used to study programmes’ development by introducing the defined critical thinking skills in the descriptions of the study programmes more systematically.

“The Art Game”: Television, Monitor, and British Art at the turn of the 1960s

This article examines the coverage of the visual arts by Monitor, the pioneer arts magazine series broadcast by the BBC between 1958 and 1965. It explores Monitor’s place in the evolution of approaches to visual art on British television and assesses Monitor’s wider impact on the “art support system” (in Margaret Garlake’s phrase) of the late 1950s and 1960s. Through readings of three Monitor films (“Scottish Painters”, about Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, “George Chapman: Painter in Wales”, and “Private View”) it argues, firstly, that a new emphasis on story or parable by programme makers came at the expense of engagement with critical debate of the kind maintained by print media and radio, and, secondly, that by the turn of the 1960s television was shaping the approach of commercial galleries whilst simultaneously masking its institutional power to viewers in favour of a disinterested, everyman pose.

On the Couch: The Alpha Male in Therapy in Contemporary American Television Drama

As ideas of masculinity have changed in the United States, so too has the presentation of men on television. This article, then, explores a range of characters that have characteristics associated with the alpha male in the unusually vulnerable position of the patient, in a variety of programmes from generic detective dramas through to critically acclaimed productions, to analyse how programme makers navigate questions of masculinity against the cultural backdrop of the most recent fin de siècle. It also demonstrates a range of responses by programme makers, including some that question hypermasculine tendencies only to ultimately reinforce them.

Limits to Change

AbstractProduction studies have become popular over the past decade. Recent studies have analysed, amongst other things, innovation, management strategies and the effects of convergence on editorial processes. There have only been a few studies that have analysed what happened inside media organisations in the earlier transformative stages (outside the UK and the USA). This paper analyses how the Norwegian public service broadcaster (NRK) adapted to the loss of its monopoly and the beginning of competition during the mid-1980s. It provides a window into how the flagship of public service, the Enlightenment Department, dealt with the new situation.If one follows the production process of the main programme of the department (with the revealing working title ‘Flagship’) from its conception to its realisation as a weekly programme broadcast in prime time, this reveals how innovation at the time was restricted by organisational arrangements, internal values and external pressures. The programme makers included many elements that are still today considered to be advantageous in factual programming (humour, dramatization, popularisation, serialization, recognition, and even interactivity). Along the way several of these were changed: what had started as a proposal for a documentary series turned into something that was predominantly a discussion programme.

The Television Archive on BBC Four

Reusing audiovisual archive material is a growing trend on television and has many purposes, ranging for commercial to more ‘purely’ social and cultural ones. Focusing on the uses of the television archive on BBC Four, the BBC’s ‘custodian of archive’ and digital channel for arts, culture and ideas, this article examines a selection of archive rich programmes shown on the channel, in order to explore the ways in which the television archive is becoming indispensible in programme making. Based on interviews with BBC Four programme makers, the article further posits that memory, nostalgia, aesthetic and moral judgement and, crucially, self-reflexivity are at play in archive-based programme making, and propose three distinct production approaches – interpretative, interventional and imaginative – all of which contribute differently to the television archive’s being seen as a ‘creative tool’.

Towards a participatory memory: multi-platform storytelling in historical television documentary

This article explores strategies used by television programme makers in the multi-platform era, principally concerning personal memories of historical events. The availability and use of televisual materials has increased in the current ‘post-scarcity culture’, especially through the digitization of archival collections and production of history-based content for television. The author therefore considers the contemporary role of television in the active experience of (re-)engaging with past events in the present. The analysis focuses on a specific case of historical television documentary, the Dutch cross-media project In Europe, grounded in a textual analysis of the project and the creators' strategies of multi-platform storytelling. These strategies hold opportunities and implications for a specific kind of shared engagement with the past, which can arguably be called a ‘participatory memory’.

Editorial: ‘Acting Up: Gender and Television Comedy’

When two of us sent out the call for papers for a comedy symposium (also called ‘Acting Up: Gender and Television Comedy’) at Northumbria University in 2012 we were surprised and pleased to receive submissions that addressed both masculinity and femininity. When the call for papers went out for this special issue in 2013 a similar response ensued: over forty proposals came in, almost equally divided along gender lines, regarding male and female comedians, series, showrunners and writers/producers. Although academic work on gender today encompasses the examination of white, hegemonic heteromasculinity, the political work of feminist comedians, programme makers and academics continues to pack a powerful political punch. As Jo Brand notes in the interview with Sharon Lockyer in this current issue, there is recognition that women’s voices are missing from some aspects of television comedy and public statements have been made about raising the number of women on screen; however there has been little attempt to change the style of formats such as panel shows (Thorpe 2014). This collection of essays also registers the recent interest in feminism as the focus of comedy. Aspects of that revival are evident, in the United Kingdom, in the resurgence of popular stand-up which directly references feminist issues; most notably Bridget Christie’s triumph at the Edinburgh Festival in 2013 with ‘ AB ic For Her’. Christie was the third woman to win what is now the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award in its 34-year history; Jenny Eclair won in 1995 and Laura Solon in 2005, so it is hardly full steam ahead. Stand-up has historically been a maledominated field (see Lockyer 2011), while television comedy – sitcom in particular – is often cited as a more feminine arena, if only as a domestic medium. Yet in British sitcom the central focus has often been a male figure or, more often, a dysfunctional couple, with the female partner taking the role of secondary character or sidekick who feeds the protagonist’s comedy by remaining stolidly rational (Gray 1994, 83). More remarkably, in comedy and television studies, it is only in the last decade that work has begun to emerge which examines masculinity in some detail. Andy Medhurst’s A National Joke (2007) was in the vanguard, although masculinity was not overtly part of that volume’s remit. The visible rise of female stars in American television comedy also raises questions about feminism and representation. The work of writers and performers such as Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Lena Dunham has directly addressed debates

Stabilizing Movements: How Television Professionals Use Other People's Voices to Cope with New Professional Practices During Times of Change

Based on an extensive qualitative study, this article explores how professional workers in an organization, in this case television programme makers at a public broadcaster, cope with the complex changes that occur when their professional practices as well as their organization are in the midst of turbulent times. Departing from a process perspective to organizational change and insights from Bakhtin's notion of ‘double-voicing’, which means that people borrow other people's words in their own talk, two main contributions are offered. First, we show how stability cannot be taken for granted but rather takes continuous work. This work is conceptualized through the notion of ‘stabilizing movements’ in which other people's voices can be used to legitimate one's own practices and thereby create a space for one's own actions. In this way, stabilizing movements can create a feeling of stability, and a sense of a stabilized platform for action. Second, the research shows the need for inquiring into the contextualizing work carried out by professional workers during change. Thus, we find that there is no context ‘out there’ as a given. Rather, this study points at the importance of studying the contextualizing work people continuously do in various ways where different contexts are created and re-worked in the professionals' practices.

Food and beverage cues in UK and Irish children—television programming

ObjectivesIncreased time in which children spend watching television is a well-described contributor to paediatric obesity. This study investigated the frequency and type of food and beverage placement in children-specific television...

Audience reach of science on television in 10 European countries: An analysis of people-meter data

Beginning with a differentiation of science programmes into five different editorial concepts, this article explores the audience reach of science on television in 10 European countries with a special emphasis on young audiences aged between 14 and 29 years. In relation to the share of this age group in the entire population, science programmes in all countries reach a considerably smaller proportion of younger viewers. Specific preferences for science content on television do not seem to be relevant in explaining aggregated viewing behaviours especially of young audiences. Unlike all other segments, the young science viewer segment is almost intangible as an aggregated group, as a definable segment of a mass audience that can be targeted by science programme makers.

Keeping fiction true to life

Nurse Teresa Lynch spent a day on the set of the BBC television drama Silk, advising the programme makers on the portrayal of character with advanced prostate cancer. She ensured equipment and procedures were accurate, and encouraged the script writer to make the storyline more hopefull.

Dancing against History: (The Royal) Ballet, Forsythe, Foucault, Brecht, and the BBC

On 5 July 1997, The Royal Ballet danced William Forsythe's Steptext as part of a final programme at its Royal Opera House home before the theatre closed for an extensive Millennial programme of rebuilding. Filmed by the BBC, the performance was televised as part of the 1997 Christmas schedule. This paper explores the striking parallels between the institutional critique staged by Steptext and the literal deconstruction which the Royal Opera House was about to undergo. It considers how the programme debated Covent Garden as British cultural institution just as the reconstruction of the Royal Opera House was imminent. Focusing first on Steptext's post-structuralist desire to excavate, disrupt, and disavow the apparently logical structures which have shaped the governing institutions of western performance, it moves to consider how the BBC programme makers co-opted, and extended to the fabric of the Royal Opera House itself, ballet's same potential to critique its own institutional history enshrined in Steptext. Having argued that Brecht might be an especially apt ally in Forsythe's realisation, through performance, of some of the fundamental tenets of Foucauldian theory, those relating to Foucault's re-conceptualisation of history especially, this paper moves finally to propose the performance and televisual adaptation of Steptext as a portal into new modes of reading the post-war Royal Ballet as Foucauldian subjugated, or effective, history.

The use of library footage in the production of television news: a case study of BBC TV's "Newsroom South East" programme.

The catalyst for this piece of research was the introduction by the BBC in 1992 of a cost accounting scheme known as Producer Choice. Prior to this, all BBC resource departments had their own budgets and provided what was in essence a 'free' service to programme makers. 
 As a result, all BBC resource departments now have to be self financing within this new, more competitive market place.
 As a result of Producer Choice, the Elstree Library now relies upon selling its services to NSE. In this new commercial relationship there is a'need to be able to quantify the service that the Library provides. It was this need that provided the central impetus behind this research project . The
 resulting analysis should not only enable the Library to be more conscious of the demands placed upon it by NSE, but should also allow it to demonstrate to the programme makers what an essential role it plays in getting NSE 'on the air'.

Storage and use of digital archives in TV archives

ABSTRACTThe digital world will transform archives which are now perceived as endless shelves loaded with film and tape rolls preferably located in the basement. The purpose of archiving will continue to be to preserve the material and make it available to programme makers and other users quickly and easily. The server system named »krava« is a tool which supports journalist’s work with agency news. It enables quick access to information and access to audio video materials in low resolution. Therefore we decided to put the data from the Archive’s data base into server system to enable quick access to archive materials and the operation of the robotized library.