Programme Makers Research Articles

From Novelty to Normal: 3DTV as Special Effect

In cinemas and on television, the 3D viewing experience is marketed as being both more ‘immersive’ than 2D, and as an ‘experience’ which augments the normal 2D viewing experience. Focussing on 3D on television, this article presents an aesthetic analysis of a range of 3DTV content. In doing so it considers the extent to which the variety of 3DTV programming, coupled with its low market penetration, offers a barrier to 3DTV becoming familiar enough to move beyond being a gimmick or a special effect, and explores what 3DTV programme makers are doing to overcome this.

Sign language interpreting on Chinese TV: a survey on user perspectives

Sign language interpreting (SLI) on television has become a regular and relatively widespread type of media interpreting in China, with over 170 TV channels now airing sign language interpreted programmes daily or weekly. This research surveys the Chinese d/Deaf community on the general reception of these programmes, their comprehension levels and their perspectives on its quality. The research aims at revealing the gap between the programme makers' intentions and the reality experienced by the d/Deaf viewers, as well as examining the possible cross-modality differences in quality perceptions. The survey findings reveal the low ratings of the programmes and any issues with quality, which the authors hope will draw the attention of programme makers and interpreters and help direct resources to the correction of the current status quo, thus truly improving the access of China's 20 million d/Deaf people to information.

‘The Politics of Television Space’, University of Leicester, 8 April 2011

This event sprang from the ongoing research of the AHRC-funded project, ‘Spaces of Television: Production, Site and Style’, a joint initiative between the Universities of Reading, Glamorgan and Leicester, which aims to analyse how spaces of production (in TV studios and on location) condition the form and visual styles of programmes. Several of the project contributors, including principal investigator Professor Jonathan Bignell, presented papers, but the programme also drew on a wider resurgence of interest in television as historiography, and more precisely how the spaces of television are influenced by cultural, institutional and technological contexts and constraints. Organisers were pleased to welcome both broadcast programmers and academics, and the intersection of industry and academia fostered new understandings and readings of television history. The symposium opened with Peter Hutchings’ keynote, ‘Dangerous spaces: studios, video and the 1970s psychological thriller’ in which he suggested that, counter to the prevailing model in current television history which privileges ‘escape’ from the studio, the boundaries of studio and video production may have offered certain advantages, especially for genre productions. Hutchings cited ATV’s anthology series, Thriller, as an example, arguing that the programme makers created, sustained and escalated the textual sense of menace through the use of studio and video, and highlighted their construction of spaces of work, as well as domesticity, as ‘sites of dread’. A number of parallel panels followed, looking at the politics of television space in terms of production ecology, human geography and the political construction of television itself, particularly in

Has the legend grown stale?

Academics and nurses have accused television programme makers of drawing uncritically on inaccurate sources to portray Florence Nightingale in a damaging light. They say she was not a saint but her achievements deserve recognition.

Entertaining ideas: social issues in entertainment television

The educational potential of entertainment television has been acknowledged, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, through research into entertainment-education strategies, intersections of politics and popular media, and the mediated public sphere. This article explores educational possibilities of entertainment programming through a consideration of British television programmes that challenge traditional and typical media framings of crimes against children, immigration and disability. Drawing on interviews with writers, directors and producers, it considers the delicate balance of roles and responsibilities generated by entertainment television content that offers unconventional perspectives on social issues. Programme makers may be hesitant to embrace the role of educator, but descriptions of their work suggest a critical pedagogic approach that encourages deliberation in the popular public sphere.

Teach them to pray Auntie: Children's Hour Prayers at the BBC, 1940–1961

From its inception in 1922 the BBC pioneered a new medium in the education of children. This article traces the origins and development of a particular broadcast, Children's Hour Prayers, a short worship time for children (appended to Children's Hour) which began in wartime, and ended, along with the host programme itself, in the early 1960s. This article considers the ways in which adult–child relatedness is challenged and changed by the broadcasts, and how disputes over the best approach to teaching the young to pray affirmed the importance of treating children maturely, valuing their religious experience and communicating with them authentically. This paper concludes by arguing that the programme makers' straightforward approach in exploring religious ideas with children was a forerunner of pedagogical development in school RE, speculating whether the demise of Children's Hour Prayers is indicative of the incipient de‐Christianisation of Britain from the 1960s onwards.

Queen of the screen

Advising programme makers on breast cancer storylines has fired Victoria Harmer's enthusiasm to do more media work, and so raise awareness.

Een heel eigen manier van kijken

A Highly Particular Way of LookingIn her discussion of the series of television documentaries De Oorlog [The War] in bmgn/lchr 125:1 (2010) 73-99, Barbara Henkes gives an incorrect impression of the intentions of the programme makers. My response will in the first place consist of an exposition of these intentions: principally, to give the best possible presentation of current insights on the basis of recent academic research to a very wide audience. I will then discuss a number of more specific issues in greater detail. In particular, I make the strongest possible objection to the accusation that the makers have pushed morally reprehensible viewpoints onto the audience. Henkes presents no evidence whatsoever to support these accusations, and fails to explain what was actually, factually incorrect in the series. This makes her article nothing more than an (attempt at) moral disqualification. This article is part of the forum 'De Oorlog'.

Establishing a Multi-ethnic Imagined Community?

■ Television is often conceived as a unifying force, creating a national ‘imagined community’. This article tries to apply this concept to the audience of domestic fiction in Flanders, in particular ethnic minority viewers. Based on in-depth interviews with 80 young adults of both Flemish and ethnic minority backgrounds, it focuses on the viewing of domestic soaps. The findings show very similar patterns of reception, both groups preferring American fiction and criticizing Flemish fiction. An important difference is that ethnic minority viewers do not consider the soap world as a representation of their own reality. A related difference concerns their dissatisfaction with the portrayal of ethnic minorities, in spite of the attempts of programme makers to provide positive role models. While confirming the importance of ethnic identity in television viewing and demonstrating the variety within the assumed homogeneous national viewing community, the similarities found caution against a binary opposition between native Flemish and ethnic minority viewpoints. ■

The problem of music in actuality television

Incidental music, once largely confined to drama, is now a characteristic of documentaries as well as other factual programmes including even current affairs and sport. The young, at least, now seem to live in a culture where music is expected to be readily available, at any time and in almost any circumstances, and many programme makers seem persuaded that only if their programmes are sexed-up with music will they appeal to the widest audience. However, not everyone appreciates this trend and complaints to the broadcasters are at record levels. For many it is an irritation, but for the hearing-impaired incidental music can easily render accompanying speech unintelligible. This article seeks to explore the historical and industrial determinants which have informed the use of, often inappropriate, incidental music and to offer suggestions for remedy. The focus of this paper is on programmes, which are generally of a factual nature, often called actuality programmes.

Virtual News

This article assesses the strategies of BBC News as it repositions itself for the digital future, explores how impartiality is being redefined, evaluates the impact of technology-led strategies on newsgathering and notes the tensions between rival forces inside the BBC. The corporation is engaged in an internal upheaval of seismic proportions, as technological change accelerates and the largest ever round of job losses threatens. There is a titanic struggle between the technologists — who have been rebranded as über-divisional force Future Media and Technology — and the programme makers, who feel their role and resources have been cut to make way for the new platforms. In the FMT corner, its director Ashley Highfield is making apocalyptic announcements, characterized by BBC house newspaper Ariel as `Get web savvy or we die', while programme executives are saying that the BBC needs to recognize and protect its core strengths in content provision, not pretend it can compete with the cyber-cities of Google and co. It's not future technology, it's here and now, they say, but it should not be allowed to override the values and objectives of their public service remit. This article is based on research carried out for the `Spaces of the News' research project, one of five strands of the Goldsmiths Media Research Programme, Spaces, Connectivity and Control , funded by the Leverhulme Trust, which is designed to evaluate the social impact of changes in communication technology.

Not guilty — but who's to know?

Media rivals swooped when Channel 4 faced another fakery scandal. How come they vanished when Dispatches was exonerated by Ofcom? asks the deputy Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel Four. Sutcliffe traces the history of the Channel's Dispatches programme "Undercover Mosque", shortly after the transmission of which West Midlands Police announced it was to investigate the extreme views and comments made in the film. Sutcliffe recalls how the police then decided to focus on potential offences that may have been committed by the programme makers. He comments: "Nine months after "Undercover Mosque" was broadcast, four months since the programme was the subject of a police ambush, Ofcom threw out the case put by the country's second largest police force... [But] 'Undercover Mosque' may have been given a ringing endorsement from Ofcom, Channel 4 and the producers at Hardcash may no longer have stood accused of being fakers and twisters, but we were no longer news... There was some pick-up but nowhere near the intensity of the interest when it looked as if we were in trouble. I felt the lukewarm press response to our victory had failed to dissipate the stench of fakery. The allegations lingered just off stage."

An ethical evaluation of product placement: a deceptive practice?

Product placement, the practice of placing brands into non‐advertising media, is a growing marketing phenomenon, which has received relatively little attention from business ethicists. Such attention is timely because the UK regulatory framework for television product placement is under review at the time of writing. In this paper, we seek to locate product placement in relation to traditional frameworks of marketing ethics. We suggest that this location is problematic because product placement is a form of marketing communication in which the message, the sender and the precise intention behind a brand seen in a television (TV) show, movie or computer game are often implicit. We suggest that the possibilities for an ethically principled regulation of product placement rest on two key issues: (1) the extent to which programme makers, media owners and brand owners make their product placement strategies explicit to audiences, and (2) the degree of commercial sophistication, which regulators attribute to non‐expert entertainment audiences.

The Consumer and Advertising Regulation in the Television without Frontiers and Audiovisual Media Services Directives

This paper aims to assess the balance between the commercial interests of broadcaster and advertiser and the interests of the viewer, as well as programme makers. The new Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) seeks to clarify and to simplify whilst maintaining the traditional European broadcasting landscape. The recurrent theme of the debate about legislative revision has been based in the vocabulary of consumer choice empowered by technology. The use of this vocabulary then leads to assumptions about the ability of the consumer to make choices. Insofar as those choices existed, they have been limited by developments in the AVMSD and in the broadcasting environment. Despite the claims of the AVMSD about viewer choice, it seems likely that the viewer will have no choice whether to receive commercial communications or not.

Public and Popular: British and Swedish Audience Trends in Factual and Reality Television

The research in this article examines audience responses to a range of factual and reality genres. It takes as a starting point that television audiences do not experience news or documentary or reality TV in isolation but as part of a range of factual and reality programmes. Factual and reality programming includes a broad understanding of non-fictional programming on broadcast television, satellite, cable and digital television. The breakdown of factual and reality programming into specific genres includes news, current affairs, documentary, and reality programmes, with further sub genres applied within each of these categories. This article critically examines genre evaluation. The quantitative research in this article is based on two national representative surveys conducted in Britain and Sweden. In both Britain and Sweden, programme makers have moved towards a reliance on popular factual genres. In Britain this is across all channels, and in Sweden this is mainly concentrated on commercial channels. Whilst there is still a commitment to news, there is an increasing use of hybrid genres in an attempt to popularise factual output. The impact of this changing generic environment on audiences is that in both countries viewers have reacted by drawing a line between traditional and contemporary factual genres. It is precisely because of the redrawing of the factual map that viewers rely on traditional ways of evaluating genres as public and informative, or popular and entertaining. The data provides evidence that contributes to existing debate on television genre, public service broadcasting, and media literacy skills. The central argument in this article is that genre evaluation is connected with wider socio-cultural discourses on public service broadcasting and popular culture, and that these are common social and cultural values that are shared by national audiences in two Northern European countries.

Whose Nation on Film? The practice of an archive-based TV documentary

ABSTRACTThe South Asian diaspora has in recent years been the focus of intense media attention. However, relatively few factual programmes have been screened relating to the history of Asian communities in the UK. Using film archive, from both establishment and non establishment sources, Nation on Film looked at this fascinating period in Britain's post-war history. This article examines the choice of material used in the programme. Much of the archive highlights cultural concerns from the period, in particular racism, integration (or lack of integration) and the reality of a new life in a liberal, urban Britain. However, the choice of archive and themes in Nation on Film also reveals much about the creative practice of today's programme makers.

Trust is refused access to tapes.

ONE OF the NHS trusts criticised in the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary Undercover Angels says the programme makers have refused its request for help in identifying the nurses accused of poor practice.

Mass participation services

To television broadcasters good viewing figures are essential in justifying a programme’s place in the schedules and, for commercial broadcasters, key to securing the all-important advertising revenue. As a result programme makers are constantly looking for new ways to engage and hold their audience, and allow them to participate in programme formats, particularly as part of live TV shows. One well established way of achieving this is to allow the audience to take part in a televote. Participants are attracted by the sense of direct involvement and influence that televotes provide, and because of this a televote can dramatically increase audience figures. To the operators of a public telephone network, however, these events represent concentrated, abnormal traffic patterns that have the potential to seriously degrade the quality and availability of the network for other applications, consequently specialised network technology needs to be deployed to make these events both manageable and profitable.

No holds barred

Realistic depiction or stereotypical nonsense - No Angels will soon be on our screens. Daniel Allen spoke to the programme makers. Over the page, three nurses review the show

Africa and the moving image: television, film and video

Drawing on the media in several countries on the continent of Africa and in the UK, in this article I explore the different ways in which the media produces and presents visual images of Africa. The various images of Africa have of course been dependent on two main factors: firstly, the development of technology and subsequent access to it; and secondly, the ideology and ethos informing the use of the technology. I begin by considering an unlikely candidate for radical change, the Big Brother Africa programme broadcast on satellite television from South Africa and suggest that it is the very absence of an overt ideology that enables it to have the potential to break the mould of the customary crisis-ridden images from Africa on UK television. I then go on to consider two programmes broadcast on Channel Four in the UK which attempt to confront this ‘crisis-ridden’ image of Africa. I next consider images produced by African television programme makers, ‘video-movie’ directors or film makers based in African countries, and which are designed either for the home market or an international one. There are similarities and differences between the distinct technologies; each produces its own images of Africa which are very different. In each case, the state has sought to influence the ideology of the output, but only in the case of television has it been able to impose any substantial process of censoring.