Television Genres and Formats
Introduction
Genre derives from the French word meaning ‘type’, and the study of genre has been carried out in relation to television using approaches and terms deriving from the study of genre in film, literature and other cultural forms. This is appropriate since some of the most established television genres derive from types found in other media. For example, the genre of soap opera began in radio broadcasting, where continuing serials focusing on the emotional relationships of a group of characters were created to address the mainly female audience that listened dur- ing the daytime. These radio programmes were called soap operas because they were sponsored by companies producing domestic products such as detergents and soaps. Drama is of course a form deriving from theatre, and in the early years of television broadcasting many fiction programmes were television adaptations of theatre plays. News and current affairs television share conceptions of news value and the institutional structures of reporters and editors with newspapers and news radio broadcasting. Entertainment genres such as sketch shows and situation com- edy also have theatrical roots in live music hall and variety performance, which were adapted for radio and later became established in television.
The study of genre is based on the identification of the conventions and key features that distinguish one kind of text from another, such as the characteristics of westerns, musicals and thrillers in cinema. Theorists link genre conventions and the norms found in a group of texts with the expectations and understand- ings of audiences. Genre analysis explores how individual programmes engage with repetition and innovation in the use of these conventions. In this respect the study of genre aims to explain how theorists and audiences classify what they see and hear on television according to:
■ Features of the text itself – character types, narrative structure, setting and iconography, what feelings they arouse in audiences (laughter, terror, sadness)
■ Generic cues which appear in programme titles
■ Supporting information in television guides, advertising and the menu cat- egories of streaming platform interfaces
■ The presence of performers associated with a particular genre (for example, in the way that Claudia Winkleman and Dermot O’Leary are associated with television entertainment programmes in the UK)
genre a kind or type of programme.
Programmes of the same genre have shared characteristics.
soap opera a continuing drama serial involving a large number of characters in a specific location, focusing on relationships, emotions and reversals of fortune.
serial a television form where a developing narrative unfolds across a sequence of separate episodes.
news value the degree of significance attributed to a news story, where items with high news value are deemed most significant to the audience.
streaming platform company that provides video on-demand via the internet, can be subscription- based or supported by advertising or a licence fee e.g.
Disney+, BBC iPlayer.
interface the visual frame through which a streaming platform organises and promotes its programming.
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As Steve Neale (Neale and Turner 2001: 1) notes: ‘Most theorists of genre argue that generic norms and conventions are recognised and shared not only by theo- rists themselves, but also by audiences, readers and viewers.’ Theorists working on genre have disagreed about where genre categories come from:
■ Do genre forms arise naturally from the properties of texts?
■ Are they categories used by the producers of programmes?
■ Are they categories brought by audiences to the programmes they watch?
The answer is that our understanding of genre is shaped by all these aspects. Our understanding of a genre is shaped by how the television industry and we as a culture talk about it, and the programmes that get positioned as its defining texts.
Jason Mittell presents genre as ‘constantly in flux’ (2004: xi), with its boundaries, investments and representations shifting to reflect cultural and industrial con- texts and the tastes of its audiences.
Furthermore, there is disagreement about whether the task of the theorist is to identify genres so that programmes can be evaluated, or whether the task is to describe how actual audiences make use of genre in their understanding of programmes. From an evaluative point of view, both television theorists and television fans might regard some programmes as transgressing the rules of genre. For example, some fans of science fiction regard Star Trek as lacking the scientific basis of ‘true’ science fiction and so consider it an adventure series that is simply dressed up with an outer space setting. By contrast, some televi- sion theorists might argue that programmes that transgress the boundaries of a genre are more valuable because they potentially draw the audience’s atten- tion to the conventional norms of television genre and therefore have a critical dimension. This argument derives from the perception that genre applies most neatly to mass-market popular culture texts, so that programmes which are firmly within the boundaries of a genre are regarded as formulaic whereas texts that mix genres are more interesting. For example, both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Stranger Things blend coming-of-age drama with horror and supernatural elements. The programmes show their tween and teen protagonists battling the supernatural beings that threaten their small towns, but also use horror and supernatural themes as metaphors for the social and bodily struggles of coming-of-age.
All texts participate in genre to some extent, and often participate in several genres simultaneously. We must take care not to be rigid in our application of genre conventions and norms, particularly as genre hybridity is a feature of tel- evision. Laura Stempel-Mumford argues that television’s genre borrowings and hybrid formats mean it is ‘resistant as a medium to the rigidity that [genre] catego- risations are thought to require’ (1995: 20). The study of genre is not only a way of categorising programmes but also a way of explaining how programmes become interesting and pleasurable by working against genre conventions as well as with them. As genres are shaped by both industrial and social change, looking at the history of a genre can show us how its form and meanings have changed over time. This can be connected to industrial innovations and trends or responding to changing cultural attitudes.
popular culture the texts created by ordinary people (as opposed to an elite group) or created for them, and the ways these are used.
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Identifying genre and format
The title sequences of programmes, no matter how brief, offer cues to view- ers that help them identify the genre and tone of a programme. There are many different kinds of sign that a title sequence might contain, which will signal to a viewer what to expect from a programme. For example, the title sequences of news programmes often contain:
■ Dramatic orchestral music
■ Images signifying the global coverage of news events
■ The immediacy of news signified by a time of day or a clock
■ Signifiers of the institutions such as Parliament that are the producers of newsworthy events
One of the difficulties in the study of genre in television is identifying which features of programmes are unique to a particular genre, to the extent that these features could form a list enabling the critic to establish the boundaries of a genre.
Television police series personalise law and order in the personas of detectives and policemen, similarly medical dramas frame illness and injury through the experi- ences of doctors and nurses. Much of the pleasure in studying genre comes from how exploring how different programmes within the same genre exhibit continu- ity and difference. However, as many programmes blend multiple genres clear definitions are not always available and we must recognise that the boundaries of genres are leaky and malleable.
It is rare for the components of programmes to belong exclusively to a single genre. In news, for example, there are interviews between presenters and experts or officials that are coded in the same ways as interviews in sports programmes.
The address to camera found in news programmes can also be seen in sports programmes, weather forecasts, talent shows or quiz programmes. News pro- grammes contain sequences of actuality footage accompanied by a voice-over, but similar sequences can be found in documentary and current affairs pro- grammes, wildlife programmes and other factual genres. Although the content of news programmes is necessarily different in each programme because, by defini- tion, the events in the news are new, the format of news programmes exhibits a strong degree of continuity. The separation of news programmes into separate news stories and reports, the importance of the news presenter and reporters as a team which appears regularly in programmes, and the consistent use of settings such as the news studio, logos and graphics make today’s news programme look very similar to yesterday’s and tomorrow’s news.
As discussed throughout this chapter, programmes borrow intertextu- ally from a variety of genres and blur the boundaries between them. As Steve Neale (Neale and Turner 2001: 2) argues, ‘The degree of hybridity and over- lap among and between genres and areas has all too often been underplayed.’
But, on the other hand, Neale goes on to note that ‘Underplayed, too, has been the degree to which texts of all kinds necessarily “participate” in genre
… and the extent to which they are likely to participate in more than one genre at once’. To make sense of the complexity of the contemporary television landscape, viewers become experts in recognising genre, also deriving pleasure
title sequence the sequence at the opening of a television programme in which the programme title and performers’ names may appear along with other information, accompanied by images, sound and music introducing the programme.
sign in semiotics, something which communicates meaning, such as a word, an image or a sound.
actuality footage television pictures representing an event that was filmed live.
the term usually refers to pictures of news events.
voice-over speech accompanying visual images but not presumed to derive from the same place or time as the images.
documentary a form aiming to record actual events, often with an explanatory purpose or to analyse and debate an issue.
format the blueprint for a programme, including its setting, main characters, genre, form and main themes.
intertextuality how one text draws on the meanings of another by referring to it by allusion, quotation or parody, for example.
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from the manipulation of genre and from the ways that television plays with its boundaries.
Televisions programmes have ideological functions that can cross the boundaries between genres. Police series are structured around the opposi- tion between legality and criminality. Narratives are organised by establishing the central character of the detective or policemen as a personal representative of legality, against whom the otherness of crime and its perpetrators is meas- ured. The television audience is encouraged to identify with the central figure, whereas the criminal is established as an ‘other’ (an outsider) responsible for disruption. In television news a similar opposition is established between the public, the news presenter and the institution of television news on one hand, and on the other hand the nations, public institutions, perpetrators of crime and the impersonal forces of chance, the weather and natural processes that produce the disruptions and disorder reported in the news. Although audiences recognise television news and police series as different genres, the ideologi- cal oppositions between order and disorder, continuity and disruption animate both genres at the level of structure and narrative. Within television news itself, internal boundaries separate news events into different genres. Separate news items and separate teams of reporters and presenters may be devoted to cat- egories of news event such as party politics, economic affairs and sport. These categories are also arranged in a hierarchy, where party politics and economic affairs are generally considered more newsworthy and significant than sport, for instance. The representation of society in television news depends on the use of a principle of categorisation to make sense of events. News could potentially include any event but depends on a basic categorisation that divides those events considered to be of importance, those events which are newsworthy, from those events that are not.
Just as categorisation is used in television news to make sense of the potentially infinite events occurring each day, genre categories are used in Television Studies to make sense of the differences between television content and arrange it into hierarchies and groupings. The study of genre in Television Studies has tended to begin from the assumption that what is being studied are complete individual programmes. This is because genre study borrows its methodology from other disciplines such as literary criticism where discrete and complete works (like nov- els or films) are the basic units. An evening’s viewing choices will often include multiple different genres and types of television. As discussed earlier in this book, linear television consists of a flow of segments where programmes are interrupted by ads, trailers and idents and where teasers may precede the title sequences that declare the beginnings of programmes. Viewers have autonomy to move between different linear channels via remote control or select on-demand televi- sion via DVRs and streaming platforms, or blend the two. Genre helps organise the viewing experience. The major terrestrial broadcasters offer schedules made up of a mix of genres, whereas some cable and digital channels are devoted to one genre of programme, on the Syfy Channel, History or the Cartoon Network.
The interface of a streaming platform will guide viewers through their often huge library of content by presenting a selection of available programmes shaped by data-driven personalisation. These selections are organised into categories con- nected to genres and sub-genres.
ideology the set of beliefs, attitudes and assumptions arising from the economic and class divisions in a culture, underlying the ways of life accepted as normal in that culture.
flow the ways in which programmes, advertisements, etc.
follow one another in an unbroken sequence across the day or part of the day, and the experience of watching the sequence of programmes, advertisements, trailers, etc.
trailer a short television sequence advertising a forthcoming programme, usually containing selected
‘highlights’ from the programme.
ident a short sequence containing a channel or streaming platform’s logo (or that of a programming strand) which appears before a programme, reminding the viewer where they are watching it. A key part of communicating brand identity.
teaser a very short television sequence advertising a forthcoming programme, often puzzling or teasing to viewers because it contains little information and encourages curiosity and interest.
schedule the arrangement of programmes, advertisements and other material into a sequential order within a certain period of time, such as an evening, day or week.
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Figure 6.1 A dance routine on Strictly Come Dancing
Because genre is unstable and has leaky boundaries, it can be useful to consider the significance of format, since formats are more stable. Format specifies the ingredients of a programme, to the extent that the programme could be made by another television production company if that company combines the ingredients in the same way. A format is like a recipe and can be the legal property of its crea- tor. So, if another company makes a similar programme the makers of the new version could be taken to court for ‘stealing’ the programme idea. For example, the format of Doctor Who would include the main character travelling in time and space with a companion by means of a futuristic technology, encountering alien societies and dealing with problems of the non-recurring characters that the main characters meet there. The format of Strictly Come Dancing would include the ingredients of the host, the judges and contestants who learn to dance and are voted for by the judges and the public (Figure 6.1).
The generic space of soap opera
It has been customary in Television Studies to define genres by their content and form, but an alternative set of genres could be established by focusing on the representation of fictional space, geographic region or basis in another source text (there could be a genre of literary adaptation, for example). It would be possible to divide up television programmes in different ways from the categories cus- tomarily used to describe television genres if attention is paid less to the content of programmes and more to their ideology. For example, a genre could be con- structed of television programmes focusing on community. This could include the communities of people inhabiting a shared space in television soap opera or teen TV, the communities working together in television hospital drama or police and detective fiction. Within this large generic category, further distinctions could be made to establish sub-genres in which communities are bound together primarily by family and emotional relationships (as in British soap opera), by an
adaptation transferring a novel, theatre play, poem, etc. from its original medium into another medium such as television.
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institutional hierarchy (as in hospital and police drama) or by the pressure of an external threat (as in teen telefantasy’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Stranger Things).
The significance of space and setting to the definition of a recognised televi- sion genre can be seen in the importance of setting in British soap opera. The titles of Coronation Street, Hollyoaks, Emmerdale and EastEnders demonstrate how location functions as a force linking characters with each other, not only as a posi- tive basis for community but also as a boundary which characters find difficult to transgress. Characters in soap opera are in a sense trapped by their location, and their proximity to each other within the space creates not only alliances but also rivalries and friction. The categorisations that link characters together in soap opera such as:
■ Family relationship
■ Working relationship
■ Age group
■ Race
■ Gender
function in a similar way as either a positive ground for connection or a source of rivalry and tension. The overlapping of these categories with each other also produces possible stories in soap opera, since one character is likely to belong to several different categories, perhaps working in the local shop, belonging to a family and socialising with other characters of the same age group. Soap opera narrative manipulates these connections and distinctions, changing them over time, thus producing different permutations of connection and distinction that form the basis of storylines.
In the genre of soap opera the large group of characters living in the same location allow multiple storylines to unfold in parallel, and occasionally intersect.
These draw on the network of relationships that connects the characters. The scenes and sequences in any one episode are likely to involve several different combinations of characters and locations. Short scenes involving different com- binations of characters follow each other rapidly, producing forward movement in the storylines. But on the other hand, any one episode of a soap opera usually occurs in a very short space of represented time such as one day or even just a few hours, so storylines can feel like they take a long time to progress. The long- running nature of soap opera produces a deep narrative history that informs char- acterisation and interactions, enabling viewers to anticipate how characters will react to events. The exchange of information between characters through gossip and conversation, and the withholding of information which has been revealed to the audience allows the viewer to experience pleasurable uncertainty and antici- pation, waiting for a climatic reveal.
The ways that soap opera works in terms of form have been used as the compo- nents to define this genre, but many of the features discussed here are also evident in other programmes which are not in the genre of soap opera but share some of the same elements. For example, many prestige cable dramas such as The Sopranos, Mad Men and The Wire share many of the same features as soap. They exhibit complex relationships and tensions between characters, serialised intersecting