Abstract
In recent years, media researchers and practitioners interested in novel practices in the digital age have focused on the cocreation of meaning and content by consumers. Naturally, when seeing the title “Below the Line—Producers and Production Studies in the New Television Economy” by Vicki Mayer, Associate Professor of Communication at Tulane University, I expected it to deal extensively with user-generated content. However, the author presents a fresh approach, examining a class of producers unlike those studied before, which is the key difference between studies presented in this book and previous research.
The central constructs whose relationships the author explores in this book are identity and identification in labor struggles relating to labor value in a digital age and globalized political economy. Here literature on industrial labor divisions provide a framework for political economy analysis in media studies.
The purpose of the book is to explain how people outside the traditional hierarchies of Hollywood manage their identities as producers. Traditionally a producer has been understood ideologically to be someone who creates more labor value than others. A producer has been defined as someone capable of independently managing one’s creative work through legal or economic means to reach some desired outcome. In practice, this has meant a lot of focus on people who hold jobs like writer, director, actor, photographer, and producer. Essentially, these are people whose names tend to show up in the credits.
Contrarily, some of workers in Dr. Mayer’s studies wouldn’t even consider themselves a producer. More commonly they define themselves professionally through work they did on behalf of the television industry. Though invisible to that industry, and certainly self-aware of their nonstatus in what is considered “the industry,” they do in fact engage in work practices typical of a producer. Here lies the research gap. Previous research has focused on television producers as idolized business managers or artists combining roles requiring economic control and creative conceptualization.
This book presents workers who economically support and symbolically reproduce this notion of a producer even as they are outside the elite who get their name in the credits. The author’s stance is that everyone is a producer in the television economy just like we are producers of reality and meaning in our own lives. The contribution of Dr. Mayer’s book lies in presenting alternative narratives about television production by expanding understanding of the industry’s political economy by including previously invisible labor. This approach is just as the television economy typically is the main benefactor of their work input.
Fieldwork for this research comprises four case studies: television set assemblers, soft-core cameramen, reality-show casters, and volunteer cable television advocates. Each group is studied with an ethnographic method. We witness new workspaces and times as a steady flow of new people work for a chance to be a part of television production.
Case Studies of Television Producers
The four groups of workers studied in this research, while on the surface somewhat disparate, are linked by the author by studying social formation in joint work activities. Part I of the book explores creativity and professionalism, which have formed the foundation for a traditional definition of a producer. The author adopts a research approach typical for communities of practice literature.
Chapter 1 of the book explains how production line workers for a television factory in Manaus, Brazil have experienced radical changes in the nature of their work. Surviving and succeeding in the job has required them to become increasingly self-managing intellectual employees. These people did everything that goes into the TV and gives it life as one of the informants reminisced. The work environment was organized in a Taylorist manner though new technologies were introduced to factory. Employees are still assigned simple repetitive tasks, which they were expected to perform as efficiently as possible. The workers call these tasks hand games. It’s a dull game lasting all day where you put parts together on the assembly line to reach production quotas. In this case study we see the employees evolve from quick and skilled players of hand games to problem solvers who even create new jobs for themselves in an entrepreneurial fashion.
The related innovation can be sanctioned, unsanctioned, or subversive. The first refers to incremental innovations to existing processes in order to improve efficiency. This activity was encouraged by Japanese management and often had also a training or team-building goal. The second form of innovation deals with avoiding boredom at work. Workers got so fed up with their repetitive work that they learned to switch jobs just to make time go faster. Employees even learned to carry out two work tasks at the same time to give each other longer toilet breaks. Lastly, engaging in subversive innovation requires most creativity but is also most likely to get you sacked. Some employees crossed organizational boundaries to build informal network and get information to solve problems in their teams. These internal entrepreneurs were very productive for the organization but were ultimately forced to leave as their informal status grew larger than their official role.
Chapter 2 deconstructs the identities of television producers as creative professionals with participant observation of soft-core videographers at the Mardi Gras Festival in New Orleans. This chapter describes the evolution of the profession from a hobby to serious business where participants define themselves through heterosexual masculinity, professional self-development and efficiency, teamwork as well as technological mastery of the tools and processes of the trade.
The soft-core companies started out as hobbies for camera operators. They evolved into formal organizations following production processes developed for reality television. Soft-core companies hired freelancers and unemployed recent graduates. They were put into teams working together on shoots for several months. This rigorous approach was seen as great reference for future work in major reality shows. The teams would coordinate daily public shootings, arrange branded party events, review prior work performance, and suggest improvements similar to the factory workers in Chapter 1.
Executives positioned their companies geographically together with the television industry in Hollywood. They became an integral part of the business by helping struggling cable networks get access to cheaper original programming and revenue from selling soft-core video series to niche male audiences in late night infomercials. Eventually some soft-core production companies became iconic brands and their professionals, celebrities. The culmination of this festivity is branded parties held at nightclubs where the producers are the guy other men want to be and women want to bare their chests to in exchange for commodities like caps or thongs.
Part II of the book continues to expand our notions of the television producer by investigating the blurring lines between producer and sponsor as well as producer and regulator of television programs. Product placement and sponsoring brands are so essential for the economics of the television production industry that it’s sometimes difficult to differentiate where entertainment becomes advertisement.
Chapter 3 presents the men and women who seek out suitable cast members for reality programs. The author explains how program brands, audiences, and laborers form the three types of commodities in television program production processes. The casters who are often women or gay men speak of their invisible value to the reality production process. They take identities that simultaneously play out masculine roles of advertisers and feminine roles of care and friendship maintenance. On the one hand, casters build audiences and fans by fetishizing the show at casting call events. On the other hand, casters gave advice to applicants about “finding your audience” and having character with a “twist” or a “difference.” The applicants after all take rejection personally because it was in fact their personality that prevented them from getting on the show.
Chapter 4 explores the role of everyday citizens in the United States as regulators. Here local citizens volunteer to speak to cable operators on behalf of the rest of the viewing public. This chapter compares how regulatory processes considered neutral engage identity politics between citizen appointees and the publics they represent.
Conclusion
For the purpose of this research, findings from these case studies are not justified by sample sizes, field site boundaries, and length of time in the fields. The quality of the study is assessed based on how authentic it is in representing how people speak about themselves in the setting of power relations and how they behave in work under material conditions.
From an academic perspective, the merit of this book lies in expanding our understanding of producers and productions for television to include labor previously invisible to the industry. Personally as a management researcher in the context of media, I see these case studies telling us about the power of individuals refusing to take roles of victims as they cope and survive in work life. It’s also a testimonial of the failure of globalized organizations to allow and foster the innovativeness of individuals unless it takes place in the boundaries set by management.
In the future I would like to see research on, for example, narrative structures and producers of content on social networking services. In the last 100 years we have witnessed the emergence of cinema, sitcoms, and reality TV. Perhaps Facebook is the place where the next form of storytelling is forged.
I wonder why the author chose not to conduct a case study on user-generated content on online video sites such as YouTube. The topic has been covered in previous studies but I would expect there to be a similar research gap in studying how these individuals work for free to get a chance to be a part of show business. Any day someone can become as famous as the Korean rapper PSY with his hit song Gangnam style if they just find their market with a twist.
Similarly, it seems to me that reality shows have bred a generation of citizens molding their personalities to fit stereotypes they see on TV. I have witnessed this firsthand while casting actors for the Facebook social web series School of Stardom by my startup Storytally. I received hundreds of applications from websites like Reality Wanted where applicants had already conveniently put themselves into a certain box such as Trendy Gay Man Who Always Speaks His Mind and Is Guaranteed to Start Fights.
Perhaps this is evidence that there is no business like show business. As long as we have a form of media that can reach masses like television, there will be masses of people who have a desire to be a part of the elite visible on the shows and getting their name in the credits. It will certainly be an area of interest to media scholars.