A Political Economy of Formatted Pleasures.pdf

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APoliticalEconomyofFormatted

Pleasures

EdwardBrennan

DublinInstituteofTechnology,edward.brennan@dit.ie

ThispaperispostedatARROW@DIT.

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A Political Economy of Formatted Pleasures

Author’s DRAFT

Eddie Brennan

School of Media

Dublin Institute of Technology

Despite all their apparent diversity and difference, most successful television formats 1

are very similar. They offer a very limited palette of audience pleasures 2 by

concentrating, for the most part, on entertainment rather than information or

education. Formats are about fun. Moreover, formats promote a particular kind of fun.

This chapter argues that, by promoting audience pleasures based in the pursuit of

individual and materialistic goals, most television formats are consonant with a

dominant orthodoxy which sees markets as the only way to organise society 3 . This

elective affinity between format pleasures and free market ideology, however, does

not come about through any deliberate design. Rather it is an unintended consequence

of television production’s response to economic and practical necessity. In their form,

content and production practices formats are pre-adapted to the demands of a

globalised media market place. As we will see here, this peculiar commercial logic

has given formats a peculiar signature in terms of what they can and cannot represent.

1 It should be noted that despite the common usage of the term, format television is so varied that the

term ‘format’ itself is difficult to succinctly explain or define.

(See Moran 2004: 6)

2 For a broader discussion of television pleasures see Brown 1994: 168–9; Tulloch 2000: 61–9; Fiske

1987: 314–5; see Philo and Miller 2001.

3 For an account of reality television as the ‘secret theatre of neoliberalism’ see Couldry 2006.

Form, Content and the Global Media Field

Before exploring these issues, it is necessary to understand format television’s current

prominence. Format production takes place not only at the micro level of studio

operations and production decisions but also, simultaneously, as part of a complex

global media environment. The rise of the format has taken place in step with the

transformation of, what can be called, the global media field. This describes the

broader system of political, economic, technological, and social processes in which

television production is embedded. To gain a conceptual perspective on such a

system, a model is required which transcends traditional dichotomies between macro

and micro, the objective and the subjective. Bourdieu provides one such conceptual

model, which allows us to understand how long-term, international processes may

interact with small-scale, everyday activity in cultural production (see Wacquant

1992; Fowler 1997: 2). This merging of national and international perspectives is

essential to understanding format television, which, despite its recent prevalence, is

the product of long-term social transformation.

In the past 30 years, what had been largely discrete national media systems

have given way to open global trade in media products. As Iosifidis et al. note in this

new ‘more competitive and fragmented broadcasting environment’ formats make

commercial sense. They ‘provide a cost-effective way of filling schedules with

localised productions which proved more popular than imported films and series’

(Iosifidis et al. 2005: 148). Since the 1970s, an austere economic climate has emerged

shaping the development and production of television programming 4 . In this

4 (For a fuller discussion see Schiller 1971; Herman and McChesney 1997).

transformed media environment, to be succesfully produced, programmes must be

cheap, reliable and popular.

Employing Bourdieu’s work on cultural production, Simon Cottle has

described changes in media production in terms of ‘media ecology’. He describes

how, as the ‘ecosystem’ in which television is produced has been transformed, the

form and content of programmes have changed also. Cottle elaborates on how

programme form and content are shaped by this new environment. He cites the

example of wildlife television, which has been transformed by ‘new technologies’,

‘heightened competitiveness, industrial centralization’ and ‘internationalizing

markets’ (2004: 82). Slow, in-depth programmes have been replaced by fast-paced,

action-based shows (2004: 93). In-depth wildlife programmes have been replaced by

shows that aim to maintain audience attention through a succession of animal

predation sequences. Similar changes can be found across programmes such as news,

current affairs and drama. As Siune and Hultén point out ‘the important changes are

not to be found at the macro level of output but within different genres: news becomes

sensational, current affairs becomes infotainment and talk shows, drama becomes

soap opera’ (1998: 29). Within and across genres, the detailed, the slow and the

serious has tended to give way to fast-paced, superficial fun. In today’s austere

broadcasting landscape certain genres have died out while others have become

dominant. Formats, with some other popular, low-cost genres like soap opera and

sport, have found their ecological niche. They have thrived in recent years because

they are pre-adapted to a commercialised, global media field (see Moran 2004; Moran

2006; Iosifadis et al. 2005; Waisbord 2004).

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