Television Sector Research Articles

Getting in, Getting on, Getting out? Women as Career Scramblers in the UK film and Television Industries

This article looks at the predominance of freelancing in the film and television industries as a lens to examine the persistence of gender inequalities within these fields. Previous research has indicated that women fare better in larger organizations with more stable patterns of employment, and in this article we explore why that might be the case, by focusing on the experiences of female freelancers at a moment when project-based, precarious work and informal recruitment practices are increasing in the UK film and television sector. We highlight in particular the ways in which gender inequality is mediated by age and parental status, and the impact of intersectional identities on women's ability to sustain a career in film and television.

‘Berlusconi's Italy’: the media between structure and agency

In this article, I explore the conditions of the media in Italy by taking into consideration a variety of elements: the context of media legislation and media concentration that have favoured the interests of Silvio Berlusconi, and the role of progressive agency (media professionals, citizens' groups) as they worked within those constraints to keep alive the flames of democracy during the ‘Berlusconi era’. This perspective is intended to provide an alternative interpretation to what has become the prevailing view of contemporary Italy: an ‘abnormal’ country; the ‘Sick Man of Europe’; worse yet: a country of ‘servants’. The framework of analysis includes the influence of the media-magnate-turned-politician on media legislation and the television sector, but also evaluates the important roles that media professionals and citizens have played to improve pluralism. The article argues that despite extreme levels of media concentration and an unprecedented conflict of interests, a commitment to engage in political discourse has continued to characterise Italy's political culture. This commitment has been expressed by a multiplicity of actors, from journalists and media professionals to citizens' organisations and media activists.

Transformation, job creation and subsidies to creative industries: the case of South Africa’s film and television sector

Many governments have tried to stimulate economic growth via policy in the creative industries. South Africa is no different but additionally has an overarching aim of achieving social and labour market ‘transformation’ to move away from the legacy of the apartheid era. The effectiveness of incentives provided to the film and television sector in South Africa are considered in terms of their stated objectives of job creation, skills and knowledge transfer, and the attraction of foreign direct investment. Informed by empirical analysis of incentive scheme data and supplemented by elite interviews with key informants, some specific policy revisions are proposed.

TELEVISÃO PÚBLICA NO BRASIL: RESQUÍCIOS DO PASSADO E PERSPECTIVAS PARA O FUTURO

O presente artigo, através do levantamento bibliográfico e documental, tem como objetivo recuperar o histórico de como se deu a constituição da televisão pública no Brasil a fim de compreender o quanto os processos do passado interferem na consolidação da TV Brasil bem como na construção de um sistema público de comunicação no país. No decorrer deste trabalho observou-se que o predomínio das televisões comerciais prejudicou o desenvolvimento da televisão publica no Brasil. Neste sentido, sua consolidação propiciaria um ambiente mais equilibrado e democrático no setor televisivo brasileiro.

Scaling Lifestyle in China: The Emergence of Local Television Cultures and the Cultural Economy of Place-Making

Media in China consist less and less of national-scale media, and more and more of media at a range of sub-national scales, including the region, province, municipality, county and village. In the television sector, local and provincial television has become national in terms of access, and television at sub-national levels has had to become much more intensely local and provincial as a way to achieve difference, and therefore survive and thrive in the competitive media market. Against this background, this article is a comparative analysis of the production, consumption and actual programs of lifestyle television between local/semi-rural, metropolitan and national television. It argues that a growing recognition of the appreciable value of the ‘local’ and ‘regional’ in the cultural economy of place-making has given rise to a plethora of place-specific media forms, and that scale plays a pivotal role in shaping distinct locality-appropriate taste, outlook and sensibility.

Cowboys or Indies? 30 Years of the Television and Digital Independent Public Service Production Sector

Cowboys or Indies? 30 Years of the Television and Digital Independent Public Service Production Sector

Mapping India's television landscape: constitutive dimensions and emerging issues

Over the last few decades, the Indian television sector has experienced a profound transformation with regard to policies, players, production and practices. Exploring this altered landscape, this essay argues that the present television landscape in India represents a heterogeneous, ‘rhizomatic’ formation characterized by complex constitutive dimensions that simultaneously reflect both the forces of media globalization and local, contextually rooted elements and realities. These dimensions include the primacy of the market and the growing alliances between global and local media companies (which mimic global trends) on the one hand, and the dominance of limited formats, the film industry's invasion of televisual space, the meteoric rise of the regional in television and the paradoxical condition of the public broadcaster which combines massive reach with a viewership confined increasingly to poorer, rural audiences (which variously represent the specificities of the Indian situation) on the other.

Determining the Term of Protection for Films: When Does a Film Fall Into The Public Domain in Europe?

Copyright is extremely important in the film and television sector. It is the legal basis for financial compensation for all creative work that goes into audiovisual productions and therefore for claims for remuneration for such contributions. Most claims continue after the death of the holders of such copyright and related rights and can be inherited. However, in contrast to tangible goods, intellectual property rights expire after a certain period of time, when audiovisual works enter the public domain and can be used by anyone without the need for a license, including online.This IRIS plus examines, in relation to the various relevant scenarios, when copyright protection for films and audiovisual works ends in the European Union, one of the world’s most economically powerful audiovisual markets.

Responsabilidad Social Corporativa en el sector de la televisión. Un estudio longitudinal de las memorias de sostenibilidad

The present work makes a review of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) concept from its beginning, at the middle of the last century, to recent days. It is reviewed too the current situation both in Europe and Spain, expounding the progress and tools which are helping to create a developed common framework of the concept as a management key element specially in crisis time. Because of the influence that television has over society, its action and position in the CSR field takes an important relevance as a possible promoter agent. Because of this, an analysis of the sustainability reporting is made in the television sector companies (2007- 2009). The results show that it is necessary an improvement that should start with the sustainability reporting development in the television sector.

Inequalities in the public sphere: emergence of community television in India

Economic restructuring in the 1980s opened the doors to the previously state-dominated television sector in developing countries. In India, unexpectedly, the resulting competitive setting produced multiple channels targeting various local ethnicities from below along with national-level expansion involving transnational corporations from above in a process now known as localization. While the plurality of channels translates into growth of the public sphere, this paper examines the reasons behind the uneven growth of community media, which cannot be explained by the community's size or economic resources. Some community channels extend their reach into the national arena while others lag in media development implying unequal political participation in the communicative system. What are the institutional reasons behind such variations in a multiethnic setting? The paper also examines whether the development of ethnic media reflects the redistribution of power taking place in the political arena or is it an independent development with implications of its own.

Regulating commercial public service broadcasting: a case study of the marketization of Norwegian media policy

This article looks at the issues facing the regulation of commercial public service broadcasting in Norway. A document analysis of the 2010 renegotiation process to renew TV 2’s public service licence illuminates how a general marketization affects the regulation of the television sector. This process comments on Hallin and Mancini’s model of democratic corporatism in the Nordic countries regarding the power of the state to regulate private media enterprises as cultural institutions. As such, the process of commercialization should include not only the broadcasting sector, but also the political sector. As part of a solution to retain TV 2’s licence agreement, the government effectively had to re‐regulate the cable distribution sector. This case study demonstrates not only the enduring strength and value of the public service institution in a political context, but also the extent to which regulation is guided by technical and economic forces to sustain democratic considerations.

Reciprocal value propositions in practice: Constraints in digital markets

The value proposition concept, while forming a central foundational premise of service-dominant (S-D) logic, has nevertheless been treated somewhat ambiguously. Recent work in attempting to address this has focused through a S-D logic lens on the reciprocal nature of value propositions. Important to this work has been a focus on communicative interactions and resource integration between network suppliers and customers. Overall, value proposition thinking has not studied in detail their adoption and use in practice. Considering the compelling notion of reciprocity, there have been recent calls for research to consider reciprocal value propositions in practice. The overall aim of this paper, therefore, was to explore how reciprocal value propositions are developed (or not) in practice at the network level. The study was set in the mobile television (TV) sector, which, as an internet-driven sector, is viewed as particularly pertinent. To conduct the study an S-D logic and Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group framework are integrated for the first time. A key finding is that while the reciprocal value proposition concept is theoretically intuitive, it is by no means inevitable in practice. Reciprocal value propositions were found to be simultaneously constrained, and, potentially enabled by these constraints in practice. At an overall level this paper contributes to the ongoing collaborative process, which aims to move S-D logic from a framework to a theory. More specifically, we provide new insights into the development of reciprocal value propositions in practice.

The globalization of Chinese television

China’s television sector has undergone rapid transformation since the country’s reform and opening-up in the late 1970s. This article presents the main results of a recently completed PhD project, aiming to understand the role of the Chinese party-state in this transformation. The project supports global transformation theories and develops a three-tier analytical framework to assess (1) the transformation of television governance by the party-state; (2) the impact of party-state policies on Chinese television; and (3) the interplay of party-state policies with other power factors. The findings suggest that the transformation of Chinese television has undergone three stages – internationalization, transnationalization and renationalization – in accordance with the changing role of the Chinese party-state under globalization. The study complements global transformation theories in presenting evidence from a transitional Communist country to show that the (party-) state not only remains a key actor for globalization, but has itself also undergone profound changes in response to it.

Community broadcasting and mental health: The role of local radio and television in enhancing emotional and social well-being

This article sets out to explore the role of community broadcasting in enhancing the emotional and social well-being of its diverse audiences. We argue that communitybased broadcasting is having a positive impact on the state of mental health of its audiences. We make our argument by reviewing audience research data from a study of the Australian community broadcasting sector conducted between 2004 and 2007. The findings reveal that the community radio and Indigenous television sectors are making a significant contribution to managing community mental health by empowering audiences to better understand and control issues that impact on their emotional and social well-being. This suggests opportunities for health care agencies to consider the potential of enlisting community broadcasting in future mental health campaigns. The study reinforces a claim that mainstream media need to be more aware of a growing dissatisfaction with their inability to 'connect' with their diverse audiences on such issues. It also provides further evidence for community radio as a key cultural resource that meets its expected outcomes in contributing to social gain.

Producers' Decision Making During Product Development in the Entertainment Industry: Addressing the Cognitive Gap

The study of decision-making practice in the context of media production has been dominated by social accounts focused on the interaction of the individual, group, institution, and wider society. Cognitive perspectives on such decision making have received relatively less attention. This article attempts to balance the existing focus on the social with an exploratory investigation of the efficacy of cognitive models of decision making developed in other fields to the study of media production.It argues that researchers should pay as much attention to the cognitive processes of decision makers as to the analysis of the character of overt decision-making behavior in groups, which has characterized much of the work on media production (particularly in ethnographic studies), if a full understanding of such decision making is to be developed. It suggests that perspectives developed in other fields may offer the prospect of greater insight into such cognitive processes.This article focuses on a specific decision-making context (i.e., producers and their teams working in the television sector on the selection of ideas to feed the product development process). It proposes the operation of at least 2 different modes of decision making, and uses naturalistic decision-making models as a way of exploring cognitive process in 1 of them. In doing so, it attempts to more precisely address the rather crudely defined concept of “gut instinct,” and speculates on how it might be operationalized and, hence, studied.

Copyrighting Media Labor and Production

This article examines the role of copyright in production and labor relations within media institutions. Specifically, it examines China Central Television’s (CCTV’s) copyright reform and argues that developmental strategies and market conditions may diminish or promote copyright’s role in commercial media. In CCTV’s case, two factors contributed to the insignificance of copyright in the 1990s, namely, the reliance on advertising as the major revenue source and CCTV’s centralized power in the television sector. Yet the circumstances changed in the 2000s with the slowdown of advertising growth, which brought copyright to the forefront of CCTV’s market reform. During the process, the dominating role of CCTV vis-à-vis non-unionized media workers resulted in copyright reform that was slanted toward corporate interests. The implications of the path of CCTV’s copyright reform are highly relevant for understanding media and copyright growth in contemporary China and in other media systems undergoing contested processes of marketization.

The Institutional Entrepreneur and the Relationship between the State and the Market: An Application to the Television Sector in Italy

This article analyzes the causes of the evolution of market forms, starting from the idea that a specific type of non public agents: the “institutional entrepreneurs may be at the origin of social systems’ “push from below” to induce institutional change. This idea is developed in a theoretical framework and with a specific application to the television sector in Italy, also with reference to the emergence of regulation as a fruit, not necessarily welfare enhancing, of self interested behavior on the part of social actors.

Television Up in the Air: The Midwest Program on Airborne Television Instruction, 1959–1971

This paper examines the Midwest Program on Airborne Television Instruction (MPATI), an educational television program that used airplanes to broadcast instructional television to schools across a six-state area in the Midwestern United States. The MPATI formed in 1959, telecast from 1961–1968, and officially dissolved in 1971. As this article argues, the history of the MPATI both challenges core assumptions about the uses and spaces of television and complicates our understanding of the development of the noncommercial television sector in the United States. The MPATI defined the social role, financial structure, mode of distribution, and geographical scope of television in ways that countered concurrent understandings of the medium. The MPATI removed television from the domestic sphere and placed it in the schools; it functioned as a regional broadcaster, evading the local–national binary that had come to define American television; it was to be funded by subscription fees, rather than sponsorship dollars, public monies, or philanthropic contributions. In addition, the MPATI's history complicates how we understand the development of the noncommercial television in the United States by exposing the diversity of the educational television sector in the period prior to the creation of the public broadcasting system.

«Du solide et du concret»: concentration de la propriété et convergence journalistique au sein du groupe Quebecor Média

Different merger and acquisition strategies by Quebecor Media—both vertical and horizontal integration in the news sector, followed in the 90s by a diversification of the group’s media ownership in the Web and television sectors—have led to the implementation of convergence policies for content and journalistic labour in and between each of the chains owned by the conglomerate in Quebec and the rest of Canada, with at the heart of this strategy the Web portal Canoe. These strategies are at their most advanced in the news chain Sun Corporation where in 2009 Quebecor created its own newswire (QMI) and rationalized its coverage of events by journalists.

Discovering the facets of copyright licensing for commercial composers

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the facets of copyright licensing for commercial composers. As traditional business models within the music industry wane, there emerges a tacit opportunity for composers to exploit copyright through partnerships with third‐party entrepreneurs, across sectors such as television, video games and film.Design/methodology/approachA case study is utilised to identify opportunities within the television sector for commercial composers who own both publishing and mechanical copyright. Despite the economic crisis facing the entertainment industries, the paper identifies facets for commercial composers through licensing their intellectual property (IP) to third‐party entrepreneurs.FindingsComposers who own both publishing and mechanical rights arguably hold a market advantage, resulting in an emergence of “one‐stop” licensing agreements – and less administrative fees – for major publishers.Research limitations/implicationsThe implications asserted within this paper relate specifically to the television sector and further research could be undertaken in order to examine the utilisation of similar practice across different sectors, such as video games, and film, within which different opportunities and limitations will undoubtedly exist.Practical implicationsThe implications for composers and managers is clear. A basic understanding of key legal terms, contract structure and the administrative functions of societies such as the MCPS‐PRS Alliance, are essential. This paper offers a valuable insight into very current changes across both the music and television sectors, identifying tangible opportunities for commercial composers.Originality/valueThis paper explores the facets of copyright licensing for commercial composers within new sectors including television. The author believes that sectors such as television, film and videogames can and do provide lucrative opportunities for independent musicians, composers and record labels. It is essential to explore such opportunities.