Ib Bondebjerg Professor Department of Media, Cognition and Communication

1. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication Historical Television drama in Europe: the bigger picture.MeCETES Workshop, Ostende, Sept. 17 2014 Ib Bondebjerg Professor Department of Media, Cognition and Communication Section of Film, Media and Communication www.media.ku.dk bonde@hum.ku.dk

2. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication Historical television drama: cultural forum and culturalencounter • The hypothesisMeCETES is based on is thatmediatedculturalencountersreally matter – we live in more mediatedsocietiesthaneverbefore • Mediatedculturalencounters on a national level has a verystrongfunction: shaping the national imaginary, creating a cultural forum and debate – for historical drama: combiningpast and present, creating a national public memory and a sharedidentity – an imaginedcommunity(Benedict Anderson) • Mediatedculturalencounters on a transnational and European level, of equalimportance: we have lesscultural and social knowledge of ourEuropean others, and media representations of transnational others have the potential to createtransnational culturalunderstandingto raiseourtransnational imaginary • Can MeCETESprove and documentthat, yes! Weareall cultural Americans. Why? Because American film and media have dominated European screenssince 1945 • Couldwe all becomemuch more cultural Europeans? Yes – look at UK historical drama and look at the rise of nordicnoir and what forms of transnational culturalnegotiationsthat has created.

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11. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication Models of culturalglobalization (Crane 2002)

12. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication Focus on interrelated processes in creative media industries (Model from Lotz & Havens)

13. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication Transnationalization – not just structures, it’speople! • Timothy Havens’ : ‘Global Television Marketplace’t: • ‘This book demonstrateshow the business cultureof global television exerts a relativelyautonomous, overdetermininginfluence on the processes of trade and flows of programming. Itsmain argument is that international television executiveswho promote, sell, purchase and scheduletransborder television programming form a uniqueculturalgroup, an international jet-setthatgetsitsideasabout television as much from oneanother as from observations of television cultures in differentlocales.’

14. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication CPH-Team. Television drama: focus points • Productionculture: the institutionalcontext – the national and transnational – data, documents and interviews • Productionculture: the creativeprocess and context – data, documents and interviews • Distribution culture: gatekeepers and institutionalnetworks – data, documents and interviews • Genres and cultural traditions: specific national and transnational forms of narrative, style and themes (mainfocus and cases: historical drama, contemporary drama and crime) • Audiences and reception: • Quantitativeaudience data (UK;BE,DK) all broadcast television drama 2005- present (countries, regions, genres, share, rating, age profile, gender profile, social demographic profile) • Case studies of historical drama, contemporary drama and crime from UK,BE, DK and selected European co-productions • Focus groups with audiences in threecountries on cases and general • Social media reception and reception in traditional media via national database coding of reception of case study dramas

15. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication Europe – a challengingplace for distribution and co-production • Despitewhat it mightsay in a business plan, Europe is not a region. It is many, manydifferentcountries… manylinquistic centers, many religions, manypoliticalschemes, manydifferentcultureswith differentviews of themselves and of their position within Europe, indeeddifferentviews of what it is that television is there to do’. (Chrishawks, Discovery, quoted in Bielby & Harrington 2008: 163) • Increasedco-productioncouldlead to increasedco-distribution: ’culturaldifference canbe an attraction… and a stumblingblock’ weneed to understand howpercieved differences betweenculturescanbenoticed and yetintegrated in to the homeculture’ (Weissmann 2012: 39) • ’Whilst the international product is hybridizedas it is adopted for localmarkets, localproductionscanalsobecomeincreasinglyhybridized as the localmarketencounters more international production(…) The eventualproductconfigures the culturalknowledge in a particularwaywhich is thenconsumed and discussed by audienceswhotherebyreconfigurewhat is culturallyknown. Consumption habits thereforecontribute to the rekonfiguration of culturalknowledgewhichprefigures future productions’ (Weismann 2012: 100)

16. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication The game of commissioning and buying – a cultural game in ratherestablishednetworks • ’Insider knowledgeabouthowcontentmightresonate in otherlocales is crucial to the social construction of thismarket, and equallyimportant is the means by whichthat information is communicated(…) distribution is analyticallydistinct from otherproduction/industry processes.’ (Bielby & Harrington 2008: • ’Buyersare more willing to take a riskiftheyknow the sellerwell, or indeediftheycanidentifytextual features, including the genre, itsproduction team and itsstyle or aesthetics as popular with targetaudiences’ (Weissmann 2012: 42). • ’Generally most choicescomedown to the buyer’s in theirrole as gatekeepers, making decisions basedvariously on assumptionsaboutwhat the audiencewant, theirexperience of what has workedbefore, the priorities of theirnetwork, theirassessment of competingnetworks, and the targetaudience for a particular slot’ (Steemers 2004: 31) • European culturalscepticism: buyers in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, according to Streemer’s 2004 study(p. 153): American products judged to have higherculturalproximitythan European products

17. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication Transnational audiences and reception – a complexissue • Straubhaar (1991, 2007) has termed the concept’culturalproximity’ to explainwhycertain forms of film and television genres travel and others do not: the closer nations and regions feel, the more theyconsume from eachother • The strongpriority for one’sown national film and television is a proof of the culturalproximity in a verybasicway: wepreferwhat is veryclose to us • Wemaysee elements of such a pattern globally: an English region, a German speaking region, a Spanish-Portuguese, the Scandinavian etc. • But wewillthen have to definemultiple and overlapping culturalproximities: howelseexplain the US position, the strong transnational trackrecord for US-UK products and the occasional transnational success of products that do not fall under culturalproximity • The lack of an effect of culturalproximity in Europe as a whole is probably not an effect of products thatcannottravel, becausetheyaretoo ’strange’ – it is a combination of many factors • ’Audiencesincreasinglydraw on a combination of media to form complex transnational media experiences… particularly the younger generation’ (Weismann 2012: 29)

18. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication Dimensions of reception and transnational culturalnegotiations • Codingcategories: reception texts • Media business (economy, politics, technologyetc) • Social and politicalissues • Nationality-transnationality-Europe • Genre-aesthetics-narrative, actors • Other

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21. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication Television drama in the new digital media culture • Watching television in real time and on ourpreferredbroadcaster’schannel still has a strongplace in our media diet • But increasingly TV drama willbewatched online following the choice of the viewer • Increasinglyour diet of television drama willbe national and transnational and wewillbe part of transnational online sites and communities • In 2014, ifyoufeellikewatcinghistorical drama youwillprobably find it avalaible in a muchbroadervarietythat on youravailablechannel • A preliminaryanalysis of online offers of historical drama in Denmark gives the followingresults: • Appr. 93 titlesavailable • Platforms: Netflix (18), HBO Nordic (13), DR-Online (11), BBCiPlayer (44), Viaplay (6) • Clear dominance of UK, followed by US, Denmark and a fewother European countries • The online universedoesn’tchange the dominant patterns in the offline universe – it just gives the viewer a new individualchoice of the same