Call for abstracts: Publishing Strategies in Online Television

2024-03-07

Theme editor: Hanne Bruun

Issue editor: Mads Møller Tommerup Andersen

Deadline for abstracts: July 1st 2024

Transnational streaming services’ growing proliferation and continued success within a larger on-demand-driven media culture is currently changing the television industry at a high speed. The transnational competition is being addressed by the legacy television industry in different ways, and a common denominator is the companies’ strategic use of in-house video-on-demand services. This focus involves a transformation from broadcasters to online television companies (Johnson 2019), and this shift changes the working conditions and practices in the industry. It has an impact on the publishing strategies and practices (Bruun 2019, 2023) known from a multi-channel portfolio, and consequently the production cultures of different genres and subject areas are changing, as well as the content commissioning and creative processes and practices.

A key issue in these processes is that the new publishing strategies in an emerging online television industry has an impact on the future of public-service television (Donders 2021). The cultural-political role of television in society is therefore at the core of the concerns about the present development of the industry in Europe. This calls for an investigation of how public-service television companies address the present development and how different strategies and adaptations fuel and shape changing viewer habits in today’s media culture.

Following these changes in the industry and in the position of public service, the key questions to be addressed in this special issue of MedieKultur on publishing strategies are:

 

  • How do the new space and time structures in online television publishing influence the planning, commissioning, and production processes?
  • How do the changes support, secure, or work against the discoverability of the content produced under a commercial as well as a public-service mandate?
  • How do the changes to publishing influence the commissioning of specific genres of television?
  • How is the need for experiments with formats and content being secured or restricted?
  • How are key public-service values such as universality and diversity at stake in different organizational and national contexts?
  • How is the cultural-political role of television and of public service developed, disrupted, or stimulated in this transformation process?
  • How do these developments create methodological challenges around getting access to data, collecting, archiving, and analyzing data that call for the development of new skills in media studies?

A particular issue in these processes is also that a new relationship must be considered by the legacy television industry between the editorial priorities on the one hand and AI-supported personalization on the other hand. In many countries, the use of AI-supported personalization is on the agenda in public-service television’s adaptions to the competition in the industry, and lessons are being learned. Furthermore, the competition from transnational streaming services also calls for a reconsideration of the kind of content produced by the industry to compete in the market. All in all, it is safe to say that the integration of in-house video-on-demand-services requires new practices to attract and retain viewers/users, and this kind of professional work is still under development.

To address these developments, this special issue on publishing strategies in online television is looking for contributions from different research perspectives and approaches, e.g., comparative, and the topics are as follows, but not limited to:

  • Specific strategies of television companies addressing the issue of personalization and editorial priorities
  • The strategic use of new time and space structures of television as a medium and its influence on the planning, production, and publication strategies of commercial and/or public-service television
  • The online transformation and its impact on the creative processes, the use of specific genres, strategic genre profiles, and organizational structures of the companies
  • The role of business and funding models and their influence on the strategies of the companies, including companies with public-service obligations
  • The efforts to support and secure the discoverability of the local content produced, for example under the public-service brand, by state regulation and policy
  • The adaption and/or erosion of key public-service values like universality and diversity in different national contexts
  • The methodological challenges and/or solutions to media studies involved in the developments in the television industry
  • The influence of the on-demand-services on the cooperation between broadcasters and external/independent productions companies
  • The organizational and managerial changes to the television companies to meet new publishing needs
  • Interface and catalogue analysis of commercial and/or public-service television
  • New practices in the professional and creative work of schedulers
  • Comparative analysis of publishing practices across countries

Practical info and timeline

Please submit an extended abstract of 800-1000 words (not counting references) no later than July 1st 2024 via MedieKultur’s online platform under the section called “abstracts”: https://tidsskrift.dk/mediekultur

Subsequently, we will send out decisions to accept or reject abstracts by 1st September 2024.

If accepted, the deadline to submit the full article of 5000-8000 words will be January 1st 2025 where all manuscripts must adhere to MedieKultur’s editorial guidelines.

These articles will go through double-blind peer-review in January-April 2025 where we ask authors to be prepared to make all necessary revisions and proofs. We expect to publish this special issue in June 2025.

Questions about the call should be directed to hbruun@cc.au.dk and mtommerup@hum.ku.dk.

 

References

Bruun, H. (2020). Re-scheduling Television in the Digital Era. Routledge.

Bruun, H. (2023). The Changing role of a video-on-demand service in the strategies of public service media. A production study of Danish TV 2 Play and its impact on the production culture of the schedulers, 2016-2022. Nordicom Review 44(2), 235-252.

Donders, K. (2021). Public Service Media in Europe. Law, Theory and Practice. Routledge.

Johnson, C. (2019). Online TV. Routledge.