603 / 658
601
Saturday, November 12
1 6 : 0 0 – 1 7 : 3 0
TVS06
TV in the Post-Network Era
PP 679
YouTube Tutorial as a New “Televisual” Genre Between Innovation and Crossmediality
F. Pasquali
1
, E. Locatelli
2
1
Università degli studi di Bergamo, Lettere- filosofia e comunicazione, Bergamo, Italy
2
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Scienze della Comunicazione e dello Spettacolo, Milano, Italy
Tutorials on YouTube seem to be a paradigmatic case of the contemporary crossmediality marking both discontinuity and continuity with the past. Actually,
they are a new genre but television still has a great importance in setting codes and rules. The research showed that tutorials emerged as a new and a cod‑
ified genre that evolved during time. If, at first, they had a very simple editing using a spontaneous style, the latest videos are organized in a professional
way, with several influences from television language. Most elaborated ones have theme song, introduction, voice over comments, post-production graph‑
ics and editing. Data showed also that the more the channel is old and known, the more the expertise of the YouTuber is high. Amateurs become pro-am
(Leadbeater, Miller 2004) not only because they show a deep knowledge in their field, but also because they become always more capable to promote
their channels and their name as they were brands, performing micro-celebrity strategies (Marwick, boyd 2011). As signs of continuity, the research found
that “interaction with media content” (Carpentier 2011) comes here to a meta-level in which produsers (Bruns 2008) incorporate the dynamics of mass
media production creating new forms of media genre and putting creativity into specific codes. Some tutorialists participated also “in media production”
(Carpentier 2011) being taken as protagonists of new television shows. Television culture (and especially lifestyle TV shows) emerges, then, both as an“in‑
corporated” language that stands as a reference point (above all for beauty and fashion, cooking, and cake design tutorials) and as a mean of legitimation
of YouTubers’experts or celebrity status. However, and it is a sign of discontinuity, YouTube tutorials maintain specific features typical of a context organized
in a disintermediated way, like direct interaction with their public, predominance of self-taught experts, and the presence of plenty of “real” life markers
like the house setting (Marwick, boyd 2011). All these traits let YouTubers to build (and maintain) strong relationships around their channels, creating new
forms of ad hoc meritocracies (Bruns 2008) and exposing directly themselves in communicative practices (Page, 2013; Tolson, 2010).We might define these
as performances of authenticity that mediate the ambivalences between spontaneity and expertise, the market and the community, the self and online
self branding (Banet-Weiser 2012), in order to earn credibility and trust within the community and keep them during the process, leading from amateurs
to pro-am and from social media to broadcast television. Data are taken from a qualitative research that investigated the phenomenon of Italian YouTube
tutorials with a female target. The research analysed 154 Italian UGC YouTube Channels and 308 videos in 2013, about wedding, cooking, cake design, fash‑
ion and beauty, house maintenance, fitness, DIY, parenting, and gardening. The channels were examined identifying general data (number of subscribers,
number of published videos, links, etc.) and the kind of producer. Two videos for each channel were analysed with a semiotic grid aimed at comprehending
the communicative strategies enacted (visual, auditory, and graphical codes, mise-en-scene, storytelling, genre).
PP 680
Public Service Television in a Multi-Channel System
J.M. Münter Lassen
1
1
University of Copenhagen, Media- Cognition & Communication, København S, Denmark
This paper will present the preliminary results of a PhD project that investigates how a public service broadcaster seeks to meet the challenges caused by
the technological development and media convergence through its television programming strategies. The television medium is going through a sub‑
stantial transition these years, which influences both private and public broadcasters. For the public service broadcasters the new media landscape does
not only mean increased competition, it also brings their raison d´être into question when the audience is fragmented and a wide variety of channels
offer all sorts of content including genres that earlier was found only on public service channels. The project deals with the largest Danish public service
media institution DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation), which is politically independent and financed solely by license fee. From 2005 to 2015, the period
scrutinised in this project, DR went from having two television channels to six and an online streaming platform. Over the past years several scholars have
focused on the challenges of public service media when they go online (Brevini 2013; Moe 2011; Lowe & Bardoel 2007), but not much attention has been
paid to the programming activity on the television channels. None the less flow television still dominates the television viewing in Denmark: 81% of the 2
hours and 52 minutes the average Danish television viewer watches each day are on traditional television channels (DR Media Research 2016). The project
seeks to answer what happens to the programming activity when the channel portfolio is expanded from just a few to a multi channel system by address‑
ing three aspects: The programme output on a yearly basis, how the scheduling of the television channels is done, and the strategies of channel portfolio
including the creation of brands and universes (Johnson 2012) the past ten years. The focus of this paper is the potential consequences it has when a public
service broadcaster divides its portfolio into a main and several niche channels regarding the programme output, the scheduling strategies and the market
position. In February 2016 interviews with the heads of the television channels was carried out to shed light on the profiling of the main and niche channels.
These interviews revealed that DR has a strong belief in the television medium and the traditional qualities of television such as ‘liveness’ (Ellis 2000; Ellis
1982; Williams 1974) and the ability to create cohesion and shared experiences among the citizens (Scannell 1989). But the many channels of DR directed
at different age and interest groups can also be said to contribute to a development where the shared television experiences are becoming still more rare.
Therefore this paper wishes to discuss if the public service broadcaster, in the broader perspective, risks undermining its own legitimacy in the transition
from broadcast to digital media and from a few to a multi-channel system. Key words Public service television, programming strategies, multi-channel
system, Danish Broadcasting Corporation.