Professional Ideology and Program Conventions: Documentary Development in Independent British Television Production

Abstract

This article addresses the development process of documentary programs in British television broadcasting and explores how production factors influence the creation of television documentaries. It focuses on the power of the producer to select and present media content and asks how the power relations within the broadcaster–publisher system impact on content and form of new program ideas. It is specifically interested in the negotiation of decision-making processes during the development stage prior to commission, asking how and why specific content is selected for development. Based on the results of an ethnographic study in an independent production company, four program conventions are described that are conditional for the selection of new project ideas. Combined with economic pressures and independents' limited potential for agency, these professional conventions facilitate the reproduction of the familiar over variation.

Notes

¹ITV plc is the media company that holds the broadcasting licences for the ITV channel network, the public service network of British commercial television broadcasters, in England and Wales that started broadcasting in 1955. ITV plc was created in 2004 following a series of mergers of the original network of ITV companies. The company produces a large percentage of the programming for ITV, the first commercial broadcaster in the United Kingdom, but also produces for other broadcasters.

²Fieldwork consisted of a 10-week participant observation in each company triangulated by informal and semistructured interviews with the company workers. For reasons of anonymity and confidentiality some company details including broadcasting credits cannot be disclosed. The limited company located in the north of England was founded in 2002 by a group of former producer/directors. Its size and profile are fairly typical for companies specialized solely in documentary. It started off with the production of personal, access-based documentaries and over the years the company expanded its production profile fairly quickly from one-off documentaries to a range of subjects from current affairs, human interest, and crime to observational series. The company has built close relationships with all major broadcasters in Great Britain that commission documentaries such as the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5, and it also successfully sells its programming on the international television marketplace. At the time of observation, project development was carried out by the executive producers and a small development team of four people including a Head of Development.

³See Hesmondhalgh (2007) for a discussion of changes and consistencies in the cultural industries.

⁴Nevertheless, they are personally responsible for failures and mistakes such as when BBC 1 controller Peter Fincham was forced to resign over the so-called Queengate affair in 2007. In a press trailer that promoted a “fly on the wall” documentary (produced by the large independent RDF television for the BBC) it was suggested, wrongly, that Her Majesty had stormed out of a photo session. Nonlinear editing created this impression in the attempt to make the trailer look more dramatic. In the aftermath of the public outrage following this revelation, not only Fincham but also Stephen Lambert, RDF Media chief creative officer, resigned.

⁵ One Life is a BBC 1 documentary strand of 30 minutes that aims to reflect life in modern Britain focusing on human experience and emotion. The strand was suspended in 2008 and its continuation seems unlikely at the time of writing.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Zoellner

Anna Zoellner (M.A., University of Leipzig, 2002) is a Ph.D. fellow in the Institute of Communications Studies at the University of Leeds. Her research interests include television and film production, creative labor and documentary theory.