New book: Television drama in the age of streaming
Reviews"Brilliantly combining production studies with fan studies, Television Drama in the Age of Streaming is state-of-the-art scholarship. Vilde Schanke Sundet has interviewed an array of industry insiders, expertly analysing executives' strategies, digital flagship productions, and new paradoxes of audience making. Streaming may have shifted contemporary TV drama into a "world championship" of globalised brands, but Sundet reminds us of the need to focus on national and cultural contexts. There's so much great content in this book, I binged it in one sitting. And now you can, too".
―Matt Hills, Professor, University of Huddersfield, UK. "This excellent book engagingly explores why the television industries are changing in the age of streaming and how to think of the implications from a specific national and cultural perspective as well as from an international and transnational point of view. The impressive case study material provides a nuanced ground for analysing major changes in commissioning strategies and production cultures while also illustrating how new publishing strategies are changing traditional industry-audience relations. The book is an important contribution to media industry and television studies (or should one now say ‘streaming studies’?)". ―Eva Novrup Redvall, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. "Television Drama in the Age of Streaming is a well-timed and germane book, dealing as it does with the latest phase of globalization, media convergence, and digitalisation, and how global streaming services are offering new opportunities for producing as well as distributing and consuming drama. What is particularly impactful about the book is how it focuses on NRK, the Norwegian public service broadcaster, seemingly at the margins of the global television industry; but in how this book realigns our thinking about how television content is being commissioned and made, but also 'published' across multiple platforms makes for an indispensable read. This book is welcome, necessary and an important addition to any bookshelf for those studying transnational TV business, production and distribution trends." ―Janet McCabe, Reader in Television and Film Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, UK. "This book is an innovative attempt to look at streaming from the perspective of Norway, a small country with its own distinctive culture and a huge appetite for the transnational drama that forms the backbone of contemporary streaming. It is very well researched, and offers in-depth analyses of the transnational strategies and digital production cultures that public service broadcaster NRK has developed to appeal to demanding audiences. It constitutes a great resource for scholars and professionals trying to understand transformative changes in screen cultures." ―Jeanette Steemers, Professor of Culture, Media & Creative Industries, King's College London, UK. "It’s all up in the air these days. Digitalization has disrupted television at all stages – creation through consumption – to such an extent that television has even been declared dead. More than once. However, television appears to be this twentieth century monster that recreates itself and reshapes its expressions for new and digitalized twenty-first century media culture. At a time when producers, scholars and audiences may appear slightly dizzy from making sense of a hastily changing media landscape, it is timely to read through Vilde Schanke Sundet’s convincing and pertinent book Television Drama in the Age of Streaming (2021)." ―Kim Toft Hansen, Associate Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark (book review in Critical Studies in Television online first). "Solid analyse av NRKs dramaproduksjon i strømmingens tidsalder." ―Roel Puijk, Professor in film and television, Innland University College, Norway (book review in Norsk medietidsskrift 29:1; 1-4). |
Chapters
Foreword
Chapter 1: National Television, Drama and Streaming Chapter 2: Industry Perceptions of Streaming Chapter 3: Changing Production Cultures Chapter 4: Changing Publishing Strategies Chapter 5: Changing Industry-Audience Relations Chapter 6: The End of Television and the New Beginning? Appendix About
This book examines television drama in the age of streaming—a time when television has been reshaped for national and international consumption via both linear ‘flow’ and on-demand user modes. It builds on an in-depth study of the Norwegian public service broadcaster (NRK) and some of its game-changing drama productions (Lilyhammer, SKAM, blank). The book portrays the formative first decade of television streaming (2010-2019), how new streaming services and incumbent television providers intersect and act in a new drama landscape, and how streaming impacts existing television production cultures, publishing models and industry-audience relations. The analysis draws on insight gained through more than a hundred interviews with television experts and fans, hundreds of hours of observations, and unique access to industry conferences, meetings, working documents, and ratings. The book combines perspectives from production studies, media industry studies, and fan studies to inform its analysis.
DisseminationIn English:
Industry talk: "Television Drama in the Age of Streaming", YLE (Finnish public service broadcaster) (online), 3 June 2022. Open talk: "'Youthification' of television through online drama and real-time storytelling", open talk at the International Institute for Popular Culture (IIPC) Debate series, University of Turku (online), 11 October 2021. Open lecture: "The Legacy of SKAM", open lecture at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, 23 September 2021. News coverage: "Netflix has made Norwegian TV shows better than ever", Sciencenorway.no, 27 April 2021. Blog post: "Talk to the hand! Or, why I want to talk television with global platform representatives", CST online, 12 February 2021. In Norwegian: News coverage: "Fra EXIT til Luksusfellen. Med strømming har norsk drama gått fra gullalder til tøff tid på kort tid", Op-eds, M24, October 2023. Presentation: "Tingenes tilstand: Vinteren har kommet!", short presentation at Seriedagene, September 2023. News coverage: "Aldri før har det vært produsert mer norsk drama, og aldri har det norsk drama vært mer populært i utlandet", KulturPlot, January 2022. Book presentation: "Television Drama in the Age of Streaming", Center for Medier og Innovation, Danmarks Medie- og Journalitsthøjskole, 23 November 2021 (online). Keynote: "Norsk tv-drama i strømmingens tidsalder - konsekvenser for produksjon, publisering og publikum, Symposium BAM! 2021: Utfordringer, trender og muligheter i norsk film, TV og spillbransje, Inland Norway University of Applied Science, Lillehammer, 22 November. News coverage: "Makt og innflytelse i den norske film- og tv-bransjen: Gullalder med risiko", KulturPlot, June 2021. Book launch: "Hovedfunn, norsk tv-drama i en gullalder og Hjelp, jeg blir forsket på", seminar, 11 June 2021. Podcast: "Følsom torsk, gullalder for norsk TV og biskop-mysterium er løst", Forskningspodden, 30 April 2021. News coverage: "Strømming har skapt en gullalder for norsk tv", Forskning.no, 26 April 2021. |
