Document Type

Book Chapter

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

5.4 SOCIOLOGY, 5.8 MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS, Studies on Film

Publication Details

Brennan, E. 2010. ‘A Political Economy of Formatted Pleasures’ in Oren, T and S. Shahaf (eds), 2009. Global Television Formats Circulating Culture, Producing Identity. London: Routledge (forthcoming).

Abstract

This chapter argues that, by promoting audience pleasures based in the pursuit of individual and materialistic goals, most television formats are consonant with a dominant orthodoxy which sees markets as the only way to organise society . This elective affinity between format pleasures and free market ideology, however, does not come about through deliberate design. Rather it is an unintended consequence of television production’s response to economic and practical necessity. In their form, content and production practices formats are pre-adapted to the demands of a globalised media market place. This commercial logic has given formats a peculiar signature in terms of what they can and cannot represent.


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