Abstract
Factual television has in recent decades been shifting strongly in the direction of docusoaps, reality TV series, lifestyle portrayals and other variants that underscore entertainment values, leading to the hybrid category of factual entertainment. Not least among these developments has been the turn to what is called business entertainment formats; in the UK these began to emerge in earnest in the early 1990s. This volume, based on extensive research by Boyle and Kelly, explores this phenomenon, extending work they have done together and separately in the past. While tracing the developments of this subgenre generally, they pay particular attention to two of the most successful programme series that both began in 2005 and are both broadcast by the BBC: Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice. Both are notably globally franchised formats – the former from Japan, the latter from the USA – and both were adapted to suit British culture and audiences.
What is impressive and very edifying in this book is that the authors take on the entire classic communication chain: they explore the production processes and the various institutional, economic, and personal factors that shape it; they offer an illuminating rendering of the programmes’ patterns of representation and narrative, as well as their societal significance; and they investigate how audiences perceive and experience the programmes. Moreover, Boyle and Kelly do a fine job of historically contextualizing these programmes in the evolving political and cultural landscape that has enveloped the notions of entrepreneur and entrepreneurship.
The seven chapters plus an Introduction and a Conclusion are divided into two sections; the first, ‘Industry, Text and Media Discourse’, sets the multidimensional scene. It begins in chapter 1 with an exploration of the changing economies and institutional structures of television, the evolving formats of factual television, and how these connect with audiences. In the second chapter Boyle and Kelly probe the particular historical vicissitudes of the business entertainment format, and then offer in chapter 3 a detailed analysis of the format. They see two distinct trajectories, one deriving from the documentary tradition (Troubleshooter, launched in 1990 being the main example), the other, the ‘business gameshow’ (which includes the two programmes mentioned above) following from the model of reality TV. Chapter 4, ‘Enterprise, society and cultural change’, situates these programmes in the broader landscape of recent British history and underscores not least the significance of the massive promotion of entrepreneurship on the part of Blair’s New Labour government.
Part II, ‘Audiences, Television and the Entrepreneur’, analyses the views of 96 respondents between 18 and 60 years of age, divided into 12 focus groups selected from Glasgow and London. Chapter 5 explores how they engage with business entertainment as television productions, and deals with a range of issues relating to the constructed representation of business and entrepreneurship and how these (often entertaining) constructions relate to the knowledge respondents have of these topics. The following chapter turns the focus towards entrepreneurs as role models, highlighting in particular the theme of gender. Chapter 7 moves on to address ‘celebrity entrepreneurs’, examining how these figures not only amass ‘media capital’ through their participation in these programmes, but also manage to apply this accumulation to political and policy contexts. Audience perceptions of these processes are illuminated, but the authors also pursue this theme further, raising issues about the political implications of such crossovers. Boyle and Kelly can discern a growing porousness between political elites, media celebrities and business gurus, which may signal an increasing fusion of their respective cultures. Further, they note how the discourses of celebrity dovetail with the personalization of politics, undercutting more overarching ideological perspectives and often reducing structural issues (such as the global financial disaster of 2008) to the doings of a few individual villains.
It is interesting to note how the respondents’ own background and experiences shape their perceptions of the programmes and of entrepreneurship, but what is really compelling is how their ‘media literacy’ tends to allow them to simultaneously acknowledge the constructedness of the programmes, to be entertained by them, and also – where appropriate – to derive useful information and understanding from them. This is indeed an ‘active’ audience, and one that is clearly media savvy.
In this well-written and accessible book, the authors weave together in an admirable fashion conceptual and empirical material from contemporary history and politics, media industries and television in particular, shifting modes of popular culture, and processes of reception among various categories of audiences. While working in the British context, the developments they chart are part of a global landscape: the programme formats are of course internationalized, while the motif of entrepreneurship – and the issues that it raises – have also been on the ascent globally in recent decades. This book not only reminds us how important television remains in terms of the social and cultural dynamics of meaning, but also provides a fine model for how rich and illuminating television research can be.