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Module Learning Objectives
Module Learning Objectives
After this week's module you will know more about how to:
Describe how business interests determine television content and audience characteristics
Describe how a television show is produced and the roles of the producers, writers, and directors in determining television content.
Practice semiotic analysis
Key Concepts
Key Concepts
AQRI: An acronym for arouse quick related interest, an advertising strategy to relate to audience lives or experiences.
Broadcast and cable channel executives: Administrators of the television networks and cable companies, both at the national and local levels.
Demographics: The practice of describing groups of people according to gender, age, ethnicity, income, educational level, and other information.
Digital convergence: The coming together of media technologies as the result of digitalization and offering alternative ways of viewing television.
DVR: Digital video recorder.
FCC: Federal Communications Commission. U.S. government agency that regulates broadcasting.
Flow: Staying with a channel into the next program. Another similar meaning is a planned stream of television programs from trailers, commercials, and public service announcements to the next program.
“Hammock” strategy: Placing a new or less successful television program before or after a successful series.
HDTV: High definition television.
Hybrid pitch: A description of a television show that is a blend of two or more familiar hit shows from the past.
Line producer: The detail person who oversees a television show from its concept to its production, supervises the budget, oversees the construction of sets, and keeps costs in line.
Narrowcasting: Reaching for target audiences.
Nielsen ratings: Statistics on television and Internet audiences’ exposure to electronic media that are sold to advertisers, advertising agencies, program syndicators, television networks, local stations, websites, and cable and satellite program and system operators. The statistics tell how many people out of a possible total audience are watching media at a time.
Pickups: When the networks announce their fall schedules which are being picked up.
Pitch: A description of the concept of a prospective show or series. It is a brief story line presented to a television executive.
Prime time: The hours between 8 and 11 p.m. EST.
Seamless embedding: When a product is embedded as part of a television story.
Share: A mathematical formula that calculates the percentage of the nationwide audience with sets turned on and tuned into a particular
Producer: The person who puts a television show together. The producer is usually the creator or co-creator and head writer.
Executive producers are also known as showrunners.
Product placement: Brand names and products purposely placed within the context of a television program.
Showrunner: The producer who oversees a television program, negotiates with television executives, counsels actors, and defines the creative vision of a television series.
Surfing: Rapid television channel switching, also known as grazing.
Sweeps: The practice of sweeping all local markets four times a year in month-long periods in January, May, September, and November during which ratings set the advertising rates for the next three months for local stations.
“Tent-pole” strategy: Scheduling a successful television program between two less successful ones or a new program.
Time-shifting: Watching recorded television at a time after a program was aired.
Treatment: Also known as the writer’s treatment. An overview of the plot of a television show with details of the chronological rundown of the scenes of a prospective script with information about the setting and characters. It may have examples of dialogue and camera shots.
Semiotic Analysis
Semiotic Analysis
Semiotic analysis is a way of clarifying the meaning of television. Through the concept of the Sign, it allows us to interpret the different elements of a TV show that carry meaning from the creator to the audience. A sign could be as small and subtle as a momentary glance, or as broad and widely used as a traffic signal. Here's a video from YouTube's Media Insider that tells us most of what we need to know to get started with semiotic analysis.
On the web, the best resource on semiotics is Daniel Chandler's Semiotics for Beginners. It explains the history and all the basic concepts including:
The Sign, composed of signifier, signified
Paradigm and Syntagm, binary opposition
Denotation and Connotation
Myth (in Barthes' semiotic concept)
Naturalisation (Myth made Truth)
Semiotics is connected to Structuralism, a strand of thinking that developed on the work of 19th century linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and developed in Anthropology, Literary Theory, and cultural studies. For those interested in the intellectual history, this video talks about the major ideas and celebrity theorists
How do showrunners determine television content?
How do showrunners determine television content?
Here's a profile of diverse Hollywood showrunners
Here's interesting new research into showrunners
https://stefaniamarghitu.com/the-showrunner-authorship-agency-and-identity-in-american-television/
Few showrunners rise to a the level of notoriety of an 'auteur'.
Consistent with our use of structuralism to question our ideological commitment to realism, we will argue that a showrunner is the result of an author function.
The idea of authorship is questioned in Michel Foucault's 1969 essay.
What happened to television? Amanda Lotz tells us.
What happened to television? Amanda Lotz tells us.
Lotz - End of Television.pdfPage updated
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