Making Public Service Television A study of institutional work in collaborative TV productions

Sammanfattning: This dissertation is about the institution of public service television as it is enacted in Sweden at the beginning of the 21st century. Public service broadcasting – first radio, then television – was introduced as a solution to the problems that arose at the beginning of the 20th century, namely how to control and organise the new broadcasting technology. Almost 100 years later public service TV is still around. What problems is it perceived to solve in the media landscape of today? How do the people making public service TV programmes understand it in relation to their work?This study investigates public service TV as it is enacted in collaborative productions of public service TV programming by the Swedish public broadcaster SVT, commercial production companies and additional financers. This is a setting that opens up for a negotiation of what public service TV is and should be, as well as which actors should have the right to produce it. The empirical material is generated through an extensive study of five collaboratively produced TV programmes involving mainly interviews, but also the study of media texts about public service TV, SVT and the collaborative productions of programmes, as well as field visits and observations. The theoretical inspiration for this study comes from institutional theory, and the recent developments of the stream labelled institutional work. Within this theoretical framework scholars are interested in how actors can engage in practices that are aimed at “creating, maintaining and disrupting” institutions. This dissertation describes and interprets how the programme makers involved in the collaborative production of public service TV programmes do institutional work directed at maintaining, transforming and disrupting the public service TV institution and the institutional arrangements in the Swedish public service TV field. By acknowledging the “institutional work” of practices, this study shows how the practices the programme makers engage in when producing public service TV collaboratively have a bearing on the institutional arrangements within which they take place.By drawing on the old but often neglected understanding that institutions are “permanent” solutions to “permanent” problems, I propose that institutional work involves the construction, reconstruction and deconstruction of problems that an institution is perceived to solve and the connecting of problems and solution. This thesis adds to the knowledge of how actors can contribute to make institutions durable by engaging in practices that can destabilise and transform institutions so that institutions can function as solutions to new and different problems. By elaborating on these ideas, this study opens up the “black box” of institutional durability and discusses how institutional transformation may even be essential for institutional survival in the long run.This dissertation is about the institution of public service television as it is enacted in Sweden at the beginning of the 21st century. Public service broadcasting – first radio, then television – was introduced as a solution to the problems that arose at the beginning of the 20th century, namely how to control and organise the new broadcasting technology. Almost 100 years later public service TV is still around. What problems is it perceived to solve in the media landscape of today? How do the people making public service TV programmes understand it in relation to their work?This study investigates public service TV as it is enacted in collaborative productions of public service TV programming by the Swedish public broadcaster SVT, commercial production companies and additional financers. This is a setting that opens up for a negotiation of what public service TV is and should be, as well as which actors should have the right to produce it. The empirical material is generated through an extensive study of five collaboratively produced TV programmes involving mainly interviews, but also the study of media texts about public service TV, SVT and the collaborative productions of programmes, as well as field visits and observations. The theoretical inspiration for this study comes from institutional theory, and the recent developments of the stream labelled institutional work. Within this theoretical framework scholars are interested in how actors can engage in practices that are aimed at “creating, maintaining and disrupting” institutions. This dissertation describes and interprets how the programme makers involved in the collaborative production of public service TV programmes do institutional work directed at maintaining, transforming and disrupting the public service TV institution and the institutional arrangements in the Swedish public service TV field. By acknowledging the “institutional work” of practices, this study shows how the practices the programme makers engage in when producing public service TV collaboratively have a bearing on the institutional arrangements within which they take place.By drawing on the old but often neglected understanding that institutions are “permanent” solutions to “permanent” problems, I propose that institutional work involves the construction, reconstruction and deconstruction of problems that an institution is perceived to solve and the connecting of problems and solution. This thesis adds to the knowledge of how actors can contribute to make institutions durable by engaging in practices that can destabilise and transform institutions so that institutions can function as solutions to new and different problems. By elaborating on these ideas, this study opens up the “black box” of institutional durability and discusses how institutional transformation may even be essential for institutional survival in the long run.