Success and the TV industry: how practitioners apprehend the notion(s) of success in their discourses within the Anglophone Transatlantic Television Industry

This thesis explores the discourses of success within the Anglophone transatlantic television industry through the semi-structured interviews of sixteen industry practitioners. The TV industry has long been studied in media studies, its working conditions discussed in production studies, its texts scrutinised in TV studies; but what drives the TV industry? What is ‘success’ to television industry practitioners? How do they apprehend it and discuss it? Looking at this key element through those at the heart of it is this research’s purpose, and a necessary step for cultural, production and television studies to better comprehend the industry and what drives it and its members. After discussing the methods selected for this research and bringing forth a new, sevenfold taskbased industry categorisation, my research will tackle its subject of enquiry through three main topics: •the perception of decision-makers by industry practitioners •the industrial executive discourses of success among the different industry constituents (networks/cable/premium/public channels/studios); •the personal definitions of success of all practitioners (and their link to industrial/professional success). This research will engage with many academic fields: from discourse analysis and industrial sociology to organisational research and management psychology, through production studies, cultural studies and film/television/media studies, giving it a clearly multidisciplinary scope. With this thesis, I also wish to further help bridge the gap between academic and industrial expertise. By doing so, and making sense of industrial and personal ideas of success, my research aims at developing a new framework for it, thereby proposing to academics a first approach to the notion of success in this industry

Texture, realism, performance: exploring the intersection of transtexts and the contemporary sitcom

Contemporary US sitcom is at an interesting crossroads: it has received an increasing amount of scholarly attention (e.g. Mills 2009; Butler 2010; Newman and Levine 2012; Vermeulen and Whitfield 2013), which largely understands it as shifting towards the aesthetically and narratively complex. At the same time, in the post-broadcasting era, US networks are particularly struggling for their audience share. With the days of blockbuster successes like Must See TV’s Friends (NBC 1994-2004) a distant dream, recent US sitcoms are instead turning towards smaller, engaged audiences. Here, a cult sensibility of intertextual in-jokes, temporal and narrational experimentation (e.g. flashbacks and alternate realities) and self-reflexive performance styles have marked shows including Community (NBC 2009-2015), How I Met Your Mother (CBS 2005-2014), New Girl (Fox 2011-present) and 30 Rock (NBC 2006-2013). However, not much critical attention has so far been paid to how these developments in textual sensibility in contemporary US sitcom may be influenced by, and influencing, the use of transmedia storytelling practices, an increasingly significant industrial concern and rising scholarly field of enquiry (e.g. Jenkins 2006; Mittell 2015; Richards 2010; Scott 2010; Jenkins, Ford and Green 2013). This chapter investigates this mutual influence between sitcom and transmedia by taking as its case studies two network shows that encourage invested viewership through their use of transtexts, namely How I Met Your Mother (hereafter HIMHM) and New Girl (hereafter NG). As such, it will pay particular attention to the most transtextually visible character/actor from each show: HIMYM’s Barney Stinson, played by Neil Patrick Harris, and NG’s Schmidt, played by Max Greenfield. This chapter argues that these sitcoms do not simply have their particular textual sensibility and also (happen to) engage with transmedia practices, but that the two are mutually informing and defining. This chapter explores the relationships and interplay between sitcom aesthetics, narratives and transmedia storytelling (or industrial transtexts), focusing on the use of multiple delivery channels in order to disperse “integral elements of a fiction” (Jenkins, 2006 95-6), by official entities such as the broadcasting channels. The chapter pays due attention to the specific production contexts of both shows and how these inform their approaches to transtexts. This chapter’s conceptual framework will be particularly concerned with how issues of texture, the reality envelope and accepted imaginative realism, as well as performance and the actor’s input inform and illuminate contemporary sitcoms and transtexts, and will be the first scholarly research to do so. It will seek out points of connections between two (thus far) separate strands of scholarship and will move discussions on transtexts beyond the usual genre studied (i.e. science-fiction and fantasy), as well as make a contribution to the growing scholarship on contemporary sitcom by approaching it from a new critical angle. On the basis that transmedia scholarship stands to benefit from widening its customary genre choice (i.e. telefantasy) for its case studies and from making more use of in-depth close analysis in its engagement with transtexts, the chapter argues that notions of texture, accepted imaginative realism and the reality envelope, as well as performance and the actor’s input deserve to be paid more attention to within transtext-related scholarship

Jean-Claude Caron et Nathalie Ponsard (dirs), La France en guerre. Cinq « années terribles »

L’ouvrage au sous-titre évoquant le sublime recueil de Victor Hugo dans lequel il se fait à la fois historien et poète (L’Année terrible, Paris, M. Lévy, 1872) dirigé par Jean-Claude Caron et Nathalie Ponsard – respectivement professeur émérite et maîtresse de conférences en histoire contemporaine à l’Université Clermont-Auvergne – porte un concept fort intéressant : revisiter la notion d’année terrible en y incluant cinq « binômes » différents : 1870-1871, bien sûr, mais aussi 1792-1793, 181..

L’amour du travail bien fait : mesures personnelles du succès dans l’industrie télévisuelle

L’industrie de la télévision, comme toute autre industrie, est constituée de personnes et ne peut donc être uniquement étudiée à travers une perspective industrielle. Les discours du succès des personnels de l’industrie télévisuelle n’ayant jamais encore été étudiés, j’avais souhaité le faire avec ma thèse (d’où cet article prend sa source) afin de faire avancer la connaissance académique sur les motivations et critères individuels de réussite des personnes y travaillant en leur demandant, après m’être enquis de divers aspects industriels, quelle était leur définition du succès. Comme le démontrera en détail cet article, les membres de cette industrie, avec leurs espoirs et leurs rêves, leurs valeurs et leurs opinions, disposent de leurs propres mesures de réussite, presque toujours liés à leur travail dans leur discours, et pouvant ou non coïncider avec les mesures corporatives. Cet article analysera donc une partie des objectifs personnels de succès et des mesures individuelles des professionnels eux-mêmes, au sein de l’industrie télévisuelle anglophone transatlantique. La mesure dans laquelle les pratiques industrielles affectent, ou ont un impact sur les mesures de réussite personnelle et les discours des professionnels sera quant à elle aussi évaluée. Cet article démontrera qu’il existe un élément principal en matière de réussite personnelle dans les discours des membres interrogés de l’industrie de la télévision : la fierté, elle-même divisée entre des facteurs, ou récompenses, je nommerai ici « externes » et d’autres que j’appellerai « internes », cet article se concentrant sur les facteurs internes, spécifiquement. Dans ce but, la première partie de cet article se focalisera sur la fierté découlant du travail fourni, alors que la seconde partie de l’article se concentrera sur la fierté découlant du résultat.The television industry, like any other industry, is made up of people and can not be studied solely from an industrial perspective. The discours of success of TV industry practitioners having never been studied, I wanted to do so with my thesis (where this article stems from) in order to contribute to academic knowledge on the motivations and personnal success criteria of people working there by asking them, after enquiring about various industrial aspects, what was their definition of success. As this article will detail, the members of this industry, with their hopes and dreams, their values and their opinions, have their own measures of success, almost always related to their work in their speech, and may or may not coincide with corporate measures. This article will therefore analyze some of the personal goals of success and the individual measures of the practitioners themselves, within the anglophone transatlantic television industry. The extent to which industrial practices affect, or have an impact on, individual success measures and the discourses of the professionals will also be assessed. This article will demonstrate that there is a key element to personal success in the discourses of interviewed members of the television industry : pride, itself divided between two types of factors, or rewards, : those which I have named “external” and those which I will call “internal”, this article focusing on internal factors, specifically. To this aim, the first part of this article will focus on pride arising from the work provided, while the second part will focus on pride arising from the result

Content Communities

Notice d'encyclopédie sur les "communautés de contenu" (content communities) pour SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society

Succès et l'Industrie TV, où comment les professionnels appréhendent la/les notion(s) de succès dans leurs discours, au sein de l'industrie audiovisuelle anglophone transatlantique

This thesis explores the discourses of success within the Anglophone transatlantic television industry through the semi-structured interviews of sixteen industry practitioners.The TV industry has long been studied in media studies, its working conditions discussed in production studies, its texts scrutinised in TV studies; but what drives the TV industry? What is ‘success’ to television industry practitioners? How do they apprehend it and discuss it? Looking at this key element through those at the heart of it is this research’s purpose, and a necessary step for cultural, production and television studies to better comprehend the industry and what drives it and its members.After discussing the methods selected for this research and bringing forth a new, sevenfold task-based industry categorisation, my research will tackle its subject of enquiry through three main topics: •the perception of decision-makers by industry practitioners•the industrial executive discourses of success among the different industry constituents (networks/cable/premium/public channels/studios);•the personal definitions of success of all practitioners (and their link to industrial/professional success).This research will engage with many academic fields: from discourse analysis and industrial sociology to organisational research and management psychology, through production studies, cultural studies and film/television/media studies, giving it a clearly multidisciplinary scope. With this thesis, I also wish to further help bridge the gap between academic and industrial expertise. By doing so, and making sense of industrial and personal ideas of success, my research aims at developing a new framework for it, thereby proposing to academics a first approach to the notion of success in this industry.Cette thèse s’intéresse aux discours sur le succès au sein de l'industrie télévisuelle anglophone transatlantique à travers des entretiens semi-structurés avec des personnes travaillant dans différents domaines de l'industrie TV. Cette industrie a longtemps été étudiée, scrutée en sociologie des médias, études de production, et analyses textuelles; mais comment comprendre l'industrie de la télévision sans savoir ce qui la motive, ce qu’est le « succès » pour ceux qui y travaillent ou comment ces derniers l'appréhendent?Cette thèse, effectuée au Royaume-Uni, fût la première à s’intéresser à la notion de succès au sein d’une industrie culturelle et interagit avec de nombreux domaines académiques : de l'analyse du discours à la recherche organisationnelle, de la sociologie industrielle et à la psychologie du management, en passant par les études de production, les études culturelles et les études cinématographiques et télévisuelles.Ce travail doctoral, qui propose notamment deux nouvelles classifications des types de professions dans l’industrie TV, s’intéresse tant aux relations entre différents groupes de professionnels qu’à la façon qu’ont les personnes interrogées de discuter du succès, au niveau de l’industrie comme à leur niveau personnel. Cette thèse fût rédigée dans le but de contribuer à combler le fossé entre expertise académique et industrielle. C’est en faisant cela, et en analysant les idées industrielles et personnelles du succès, qu’elle vise à proposer aux universitaires une première approche du concept de réussite dans l’industrie télévisuelle

Branding TV: Transmedia to the Rescue

International audienc

Aedín Mac Devitt. « Museums in a digital world »

Ce 70e volume de Museum International, dirigé par Aedín Mac Devitt, s’appuie sur la réflexion des 37 000 musées à travers le monde ayant participé à la Journée internationale des musées organisée par l’ICOM en 2018. Les auteurs de cette parution offrent de nouvelles perspectives sur le thème des musées dans le contexte numérique à travers plusieurs angles, tels que la numérisation des collections, la co-création et l’engagement des communautés. Ce numéro s’articule autour de trois volets : « ..

Television and Social Media

Notice encyclopédique portant sur les liens entre la télévision et les réseaux sociaux

Le devenir de l’action artistique et culturelle dans le discours des professionnels ?

International audienc