Abstract
Formats have had a makeover. Once the focus of policy and production based research, with an eye on media law and intellectual property rights, formats have gone global in media and communication studies. This edited collection argues formats are a ‘highly contextualised study of television as a global system’ (p.4). For this idea alone, the book should be read. It offers chapters from a range of researchers in television economics, policy, production and form, that address the situated nature of formats as they exist as ideas, products and services, and as they are produced and understood in specific countries and cultures.
The editors set out to analyse the formats frenzy of the past decade, primarily located in reality entertainment such as Idols (19 and Fremantle Media), or Strictly Come Dancing (BBC Worldwide), and drama like Ugly Betty (RCN). There is a somewhat dated reference to formats in this collection, with case studies of formats and specific shows from the mid to late 2000s. For example, work on Arabic entertainment formats by Marwan Kraidy, or Chinese reality game formats by Michael Keane are exemplary and make significant points about the politics of formats within broader socio-cultural trends. These chapters would be even better if they included more up to date examples.
A main theme of the book is that the feel of formats is so much bound up with local and national settings. Take the success of Nordic Noir in Britain during one of the wettest summers on record. Armchair tourists took a walk on the dark side in rain and snow covered Northern climates. The feeling created by these imported crime dramas during a dank summer is something media companies are trying to recreate as an idea or feeling they can format or a format they can adapt. Such is the complicated nature of formats in today’s global television market. Producers can’t always predict or control a winning formula and trends can develop in unusual circumstances. With the success of drama formats like The Killing, originating in Denmark, or Homeland, originating in Israel, alongside other new reality formats like The Voice (Talpa), a fresh take on these recent developments would be most welcome.
The collection is organised into four parts relating to format theories, historical perspectives, a case study of the Idol franchise and the politics of place and nation. The editors reject a common assumption that formats are merely commercial products for a cynical media market and instead argue that the global format phenomenon offers new perspectives on television and economic and cultural globalisation. The editors suggest these new perspectives can include conceptions of collective identity at work in television formats, or the tensions between the national, sub-national and transnational in global formats (p.6). Dana Heller in her analysis of reality dance formats in several countries calls the tensions between the global and local ‘flashpoints of disjuncture’ (p.47). Her perceptive analysis of human movement highlights how dance can show the exchanges and flow of global and local identities through the interpretation of different dance styles and traditions. This focus on dance performance connects with a chapter by Vinicius Navarro on formats as performative, where the formula is reproduced and re-contextualised in each specific production and cultural setting. We could add that Heller’s chapter makes a strong case for the study of formats as vocal, physical and often live performances and also the performative processes at work in the format industry. Format houses like Fremantle Media, Endemol or Shine Group have cleverly tapped into all things performative to widen consumption practices for reality entertainment formats. In this way, the most dominant trend in global formats links with another good chapter in the book by Tony Shirato on the sports industry. The live sporting event, with its mix of production and presentation techniques, has been a major influence on live reality events, including the build up of excitement and interaction during and after the event. Live television is not easy to pull off and there are many examples in sports coverage or in sports inspired reality TV that indicate producers do everything they can to manage live events that can spin out of control. This is why big daddy companies like Fremantle Media often produce formats for other companies, such as 19 in the case of American Idol - they have a proven track record in producing live shiny floor shows.
There is a strong collection of chapters on the historical dimensions to formats. Yeidy M Rivero’s historical analysis of a Cuban-American sitcom shows the flux of formats as they transfer back and forth from industry to regional and local contexts. In a sophisticated analysis, Jerome Bourdon reflects on the history of reality entertainment and what this suggests about the contribution of genre analysis to formats and processes of cultural globalisation. A case study of Italian host Mike Bongiorno by Chiara Ferrari highlights how one television personality ‘embodied the dichotomy between global and local forces at play in post-war Italy (p.145). Joseph Straubhaar’s excellent chapter on Brazilian telenovelas demonstrates the open form and the political and social issues at work in telenovelas from the 1970s to now. There are complex production setups that suggest cultural hybridisation is crucial to understanding global formats. Paul Torre’s chapter on Hollywood as a player in the format trade emphasises a theme running through this historical section on transfer and the way big companies try to stay flexible to the flux of formats in global and local settings.
A case study of the Idol franchise forms the third part of the book. There are extended analyses of Indian Idol and the politics and aesthetics of difference by Biswarup Sen; New Zealand Idol and troubling representations of ethnic and cultural diversity in the construction of national identities by Joost De Bruin; Idol adaptations in several African countries and the representation of global styles and cultural hybridisation by Martin Nkosi; and American Idol and its self-presentation and branding in a global market by Erica Jean Bochanty-Aguero. In this section, there is a lack of reference to recent studies in reality TV on production issues in a changing television environment, rapid turnover in the communicative form of formats and their ever increasing need to respond to fickle consumers, audiences and publics, and audience research on what people are actually doing when they watch big reality events like Idol. Such work would have strengthened these various chapters, through the attention to genre and cultures of viewing, production and performance practices, global and local tensions, issues of cultural hybridisation, and attention to the situated nature of reality TV as part of a broader social and media matrix.
What is present in the various chapters in the collection are representations of audiences, discourses of audiences, and some references to blogs. Representations and discourses of audiences are significant to the study of global formats, but this is not the same as other kinds of audience research with rigorous empirical approaches. This becomes particularly apparent in work on reality formats where audience interaction and participation is crucial to the success and failure of many live reality events. It is one thing for producers to claim knowledge of their consumers, to represent audiences and publics in the shows, or in spin off shows, news reports, and general tabloid and social media gossip. But such claims about audiences need to be investigated. One author writes ‘the reception of these formats is, at one level, as unproblematic as its dissemination’ (p.203). Whilst this point is made in the context of representations of difference in the reality genre, such a statement exposes a failure in this collection to include audience research in global formats. A chapter by Eddie Brennan on the political economy of audience pleasures as fun, glamour and emotion at the expense of political or social realities, is an assertive statement about audience attraction to reality formats that can be challenged by audience research. Work on representations of difference, or the self branding of Idol, similarly make claims about the genre and this format as a whole, claims that can be complicated by reference to existing audience studies. For example, Sharon Sharp’s good research on representations of families, gender and class in formats like Wife Swap would benefit from reference to two books out now that use audience research to challenge general claims made about a global neoliberal agenda of reality TV.
In the final section of the book on trans-formats, previously mentioned chapters by Kraidy, Keane, and Sharp work alongside research by Lauhona Ganguly on a political economic analysis of Who Wants to be a Millionaire in India. What Ganguly shares with these other chapters is a nuanced analysis of the social and political context to the production and public media debates surrounding popular formats. The work of Bourdieu on neoliberalism is used here to argue that individualism, risk taking and entrepreneurship are key features of this gameshow and narratives of cultural and national identity in India. A final chapter by Tasha Oren argues for a ‘big picture perspective’ (p.366) where formats are not only spatial or temporal, but also organic forms in the evolution of television. Certainly, Oren’s reflective chapter represents a key point in the book that calls for the end of television research that seems to ignore the vibrant and complex development in global formats across a range of media.