ECREA16-Abstract

593

Friday, November 11

1 8 : 0 0 – 1 9 : 3 0

TVS03

Television Production

PP 451

Concentration, Conglomeration and Global Format Trade: Continuities and Disruptions in National TV Production

H. Keinonen

University of Turku, Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, Turku, Finland

Since the 1990s, two drastic and interrelated changes have affected television production all over the world. First, as a result of increasing concentration

and conglomeration, the main players in the media industry have become fewer, and these few are exerting their ownership across the multitude of media

industries. In Finland, which is a small television market in the European scale, independent production companies started to emerge only in the late 1980s

after the establishment of the third terrestrial television channel. Now, all the major production companies have been turned into local arms of international

media conglomerates and renamed as Shine Finland, Zodiak Finland, Banijay Finland, etc. Even the entertainment department of the main commercial

broadcaster, MTV3, was sold to Pearson Television and is now known as FremantleMedia Finland. Second, international trade in finished programmes has

been largely replaced by the licensing of television formats.The globalisation of format trade can also be seen in Finnish television as format adaptations are

increasingly conquering prime-time schedules, thus superseding both original domestic programming and imported finished shows. As the multinational

production companies mainly focus on selling and producing formats from their own catalogues, these changes concern television, both as a cultural and

economic institution, and affect television production at the global and local scale. My paper will explore the effects of concentration, conglomeration

and global format trade on Finnish television production. Drawing from media industry research, the study analyses the structures, agencies and practices

of the television industry. According to the structuration theory by Anthony Giddens (1984), structures simultaneously restrict and enable individual agen‑

cies by creating both rules and resources. Structure thus refers to the structuring properties that make it possible for discernibly similar social practices to

exist across varying spans of time and space. What are the structuring properties of Finnish television production? How do they define individual agency?

What are the repetitive practices that contribute to maintaining these structures? Are these structures, agencies and practices promoting disruptions or

continuities? My paper aims to answer these questions not only by covering the various levels of the television industry over a long time span, but also

by combining qualitative and quantitative methods. As there are no figures of format import available, I will conduct a preliminary quantitative analysis

of programming on the main television channels in Finland in four years – 1988, 1996, 2004 and 2012 – to estimate the extent of format adaptations. This

will be completed with a desk analysis on the development of the independent production sector in Finland. The continuities and disruptions indicated by

these analyses will be further discussed by analysing 15 interviews conducted with people working in television production and, especially, with television

formats.

PP 452

Selling Location – Reaching Audiences: The Example of Deutschland 83

S. Eichner

Aarhus University, Media Studies - School of Culture and Communication, Aarhus, Denmark

When RTL’s flagship production and quality series Deutschland 83 'failed” in audience ratings in late 2015, a shockwave ran through the national media

business. The series that has been praised by critics and the creative industry enthusiastically faced a lack of audience interest that was not expected at

all – especially after RTL decided for an innovative distribution strategy and left it to Sundance TV to premiere the series in the USA before showing it on

the domestic market. In the US market, on the other hand, the series can be considered as a success, following other relatively successful foreign TV drama

such as The Returned (France) or Gran Hotel (Spain). The question of local and global appeal has been widely discussed within research (e.g. Esser 2013,

Oren & Shahaf (eds.) 2012, Straubhaar 2007), however usually with regards of the flow from "big nation" and "languages of advantages" towards other

regions. The counter flow – the flow from small nations into the global world – is a recent development that came as a surprise for many (research on

this: e.g. Bondebjerg & Redvall 2015, McElroy & Caitriona 2016). This paper will follow two lines of argument: It looks at textual strategies that emphasize

the local – the specific historical and local setting of Germany during the cold war – and in a more specific sense the locality of Berlin (the "mediated"

Berlin) being an imagined place, 'injected” with narrative meaning Reijnders (2011). This narrative meaning is created by many aspects, such as Berlin’s

reputation as a party place or an artists’place, it’s specific history as split city, but also by the numerous mediated images of Berlin (e.g. "Metropolis", "Berlin

Alexanderplatz", "Berlin, Berlin", "Berlin Station" or "Homeland") that all stage Berlin as location, thus adding to the imagined, fictional image of Berlin.

As has been argued elsewhere (Eichner &Waade 2015), the location image (and the local theme as such) can turn into a commodity that entails a global

appeal. But the domestic audience ratings did not meet the producer’s expectations, nor was it anticipated by the overwhelming positive critiques that

Deutschland 83 could "fail" to reach a big audience within Germany. Can the reason for this be traced back to textual questions? In a second line of argument

the perspective is turned towards television as a medium in transition and it’s complicated relationship with old and new audiences. The focus here will be

the self-concept of RTL as a (classic) television broadcaster and it’s innovative distribution strategy on the one hand, and it’s traditional marketing strategy

within the domestic market on the other.The underlying hypothesis is that RTL might have failed to reach the series’core audience due to a lack of adequate

communication tools and strategy (such as a stronger emphasize on online- and social media).