TELEVISION STUDIES: THE BASICS (Thornton 2009; Bauder 2007; Lemmonier 2008). That seems like

82 TELEVISION STUDIES: THE BASICS (Thornton 2009; Bauder 2007; Lemmonier 2008). That seems like

a program worthy of analysis, given its themes and their uptake. Half- a-century ago, Smythe called for an analysis of television

texts as “a group of symbols” that “serve as a medium of exchange between the mass media and the audience” (1954: 143). This can

be undertaken in ways that do not create qualities in either pro- grams or viewers that are products of critics’ desires. Genre- based study is crucial to understanding content, given the serial, repeti- tious nature of much television, especially with channels dedicated to one topic, from shopping to Manchester United. Genre is central to TV, as evidenced by, for example, the routine practices of classification undertaken by program guides. Paul Attallah sug- gests that “the entire television industry is organized around the production of specific genres. . . . Television could be said not to exist outside of its genres” (1984: 227). The concept derives from the Latin genus, which in turn comes from the word for giving birth. Genre originally referred to kinds of people, often by class or race – “an act of classification and classification” and hence “a strat- egy of control” (Hodge 1990: 21). Certain genres are deemed intrinsically worthier than others because of their moral stance or the special qualities required of their creators. This aspect of theo- rizing genre dates back hundreds of years (Hunter 1988: 213–14). Its traces are apparent in TV Studies 1.0 and the way regulators and critics create hierarchies of pleasure and worth. For example, Ofcom, the UK’s guardian of the electronic media, shies away from deriding reality television, but can’t bring itself to catalog reality in the same way as current affairs or science, so it has con- structed a distinction between “factual entertainment” (reality) and “Serious Factual” (documentary) (which rates capital letters) (2007: 5). Generic tendencies have been emphasized and perhaps even

endorsed by Television Studies 2.0, which prefers the popular over the avant garde, the audience over the author. Television Studies

1.0 favors the opposite (Edgar 2000: 75; Bignell et al. 2000b: 81). Genres are about the interplay of repetition and difference, and their organization and interpretation by producers, audiences, and critics. This can happen during production, scheduling, reviewing, and watching. We may even plan our viewing by genre (Saturday is sport, or Wednesday is British comedy). There is enough in common between these descriptions to justify grouping them

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together, and enough that is different to mean we watch more than just one part of a program or schedule. This represents continuity in the history of literary and televisual genres: they are always related to the cultural attributes of a population at a certain moment, sometimes as reactions to those attributes, and sometimes as sources of them (Hunter 1988: 215). Just as the expansion of printing and literacy held implications for the emergence of the novel, so the spread of TiVo and technological familiarity influence the mixed genres of latter- day TV.

Knowing how to construct programs and schedules along generic lines is both a matter of dramatic rules and economic ones: having one’s product quickly and easily recognized as a reality show, a crime series, or a science- fiction serial. Genre in television works in varied ways: stations may themselves be genres (such as film or sport channels); viewers may reorganize TV to suit their own schedules, via delayed replay; and domestic satellite dishes may pick up signals that are dispatched promiscuously and with no interest in organizing the audience’s time, given that the projected audience is globally spread out. Genres are industrial categories that make series recognizable. Industrial innovation involves both repe- tition and difference, which in turn can discourage taking risks, curbing costly newness with cheap formulae.

Genre is also about relations between topics, camera angles, colors, sounds, and actors (Curti 1988: 156). John Caughie fore- grounds visual style (how the camera moves and shots are put together), mise- en-scène (what appears in front of the camera), and narrative structures (1991: 137). As Fiske and Hartley show, the shot in television depends for its meaning on the genre in which it is located as well as how it is combined with other shots. They instance footage of children leaving school, which may signify the

routine of life for a family member, if it occurs in a documentary; characterization and tension, in a television play; or risk, in a public- service announcement (1980: 53).

Genres are fluid guides to TV, rather than laws with rigid dis- tinctions. For example, principally factual programs must have entertaining elements or risk losing their audiences, while primarily fictional ones must touch on fact and impart knowledge (Smythe 1954: 147). So a genre such as the wildlife documentary undergoes fascinating mutations. In the US, it was a fringe interest until