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Organizational Contexts and Television Dramas a Comparative Study of Public and Commercial Television

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Organizational Contexts and Television Dramas a Comparative Study of Public and Commercial Television Organizational Contexts and Television Dramas A Comparative Study of Public and Commercial Television Eric Kit-Wai MA June, 1993 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of Master of PMlosopliy 、 (Communications) ",: .:’ J—、 at the Chinese University of Hong Kong^、、 . I L. T'：. t . '；…-• V ‘ - Ly t! • 嘴- •： Thesis Committee / .J." Dr. Joseph Man Chan, Chairman ” Dr, Paul Sill-Nam Lee Dr. Choi Po-King ！X j ， 一 r , , , A 力 ， ,> \ / 广 ⑩ Acknowledgments 工 wish to thank my mentor and thesis supervisor Dr. Joseph Chan, who has helped me develop my academic interest, let me choose my own path, and given me insightful advice along the way. 工 am also grateful to Dr. Paul Lee, whose critical comments have sharpened the focus of the thesis, and Dr. Choi Po- king, who has been generous in spending time assessing my work. 工 am indebted to my wife Chau-ling for supporting the family during my study. She has tolerated my wanderings in new places and new pursuits for the past ten years. The completion of the thesis is testimony to her support and understanding. Abstract This study seeks to identify and explain the ideological diversity of the TV dramas produced in different organizational contexts. It is a comparative study of two Hong Kong TV dramas, one produced by public television RTHK, the other by commercial broadcast television TVB. Discourse analyses of the two dramas indicate that the commercial drama have limited ideological diversity and are pro-establishment in nature, while the public drama are ideologically more diversified and negotiatory. The commercial drama is classified as "choric drama" which resonates with mainstream ideology; the public drama is classified as "lyric drama" which negotiates with the establishment. The choric/lyric pattern is not case specific. Organizational analyses of the production contexts show that the ideological differences of the two dramas are systematically shaped by organizational factors. In the context of TVB, the organizational schema of commercialism, working together with popular aesthetics and feedback system of mass rating, creates an unobtrusive cognitive framework which favors creative options with mainstream and conventional ideology. TVB allocates resources by a strict cost/profit ratio, delegates responsibilities in centralized creative locus, and prefers a more restrictive drama genre of continued series. These restrictive administrative controls limit individual autonomy and thus ideological diversity. The resultant effects of the above cognitive and administrative factors predispose TV dramas of commercial broadcaster TVB towards the choric mode of relatively mainstream and monolithic ideology. In the context RTHK, the organizational schema of non- commercial ism, working together with elitist aesthetics and feedback system of critical review, creates an unobtrusive cognitive framework which favors creative options with elitist and negotiatory ideology. RTHK allocates resources by ambiguous public utility measure, delegates responsibilities in decentralized creative loci, and prefers a more flexible drama genre of single-play series, These less restrictive administrative controls allow greater degree of individual autonomy and thus ideological diversity. The resultant effects of the cognitive and administrative factors predispose TV dramas of public broadcaster RTHK towards the lyric mode of diversified and negotiatory ideologies, Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Formulation of Research Questions 3 1.2 Significance 8 1.3 Structure of the Thesis 11 Chapter 2 Theoretical Review 12 2.1 Television Studies 13 2.2 Media Organization Research 17 2.3 Culture Production Theory 2 0 2.4 Organizational Theory 22 Chapter 3 Methodology 2 6 3.1 Significance and Representativeness 28 3.2 Comparability 30 3.3 Textual Analysis 3 3 3.4 Organizational Analysis 34 Chapter 4 Textual Analysis 3 7 4.1 Television and Ideology 37 4.2 The Comparative Strategy 41 4.3 Discourse of Capitalistic Economy 46 4.4 Discourse of Sino-Hongkong Politics 51 4.5 Discourse of Patriarchal Culture 57 4.6 Choric and Lyric Drama 59 Chapter 5 Organizational Analysis 62 5.1 Configuration of Creative Locus 63 5.2 Organization Schema 66 5.3 Feedback System 7 8 5.4 Track Record & Resources Allocation 90 5.5 Case Control: Context and Genre 97 Chapter 6 Conclusion 109 6.1 Organizational Contexts of GM and BLR 110 6.2 Ideological Effect of Contextual Factor 111 6.3 The Limit of Generalization 115 6.4 Theoretical, Policy & Methodological Implications 118 6.5 For a Dynamic Model of TV Production 121 6.6 Further Research 124 Bibliography 126 Appendix 1 Interview Questions 13 4 Appendix 2 Name List of Interviewees 13 7 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION Television is the central cultural institute of modern society. Since its inception in the mid-20th century, television has expeditiously replaced film, radio, picture magazine and newspaper to become the most penetrative mass medium. In Comstock‘s (198 9) description, the penetration graph of television resembles a strike of lightning. Not only has television attained quick penetration, it has also become the integral part of the social and cultural fabrics of everyday life. Day and night, television informs, amuses, stirs up emotions, arouses attention, and, above all, inconspicuously represents realities and shares culture through its factual and fictional programs. It is domestic and everywhere. Watching television is a widely practiced ritual from which participants are sharing common cultural norms (Carey, 1989) and constructing frameworks for collective sense making (Silverstone, 1981). However, television culture is poorly understood despite its centrality in modern culture. The reason for the negligence might be that television medium is semiotically redundant^, aesthetically deficient2 and thus culturally despised. Many elites and media scholars reject television content, especially entertainment content, as an important cultural form worthy of investigation. 1. TV viewing is a low involvement activity (Barwise & Ethrenberg, 1988). In order to attract the attention of the inattentive audience, television in general tends to use all semiotic channel of communication. Salter (1992) describes five semiotic channels of television: Image, graphics, voice, music, sound effects. 2. Traditionally, artistic works call for subtlety, sophistication, and originality. But television as a mass medium has to be simple and redundant. It must cater for popular tastes and thus is inevitably lacking the sophistication of artistic works. 2 Of course, researchers have long been investigating 七he behavioral and attitudinal effects of television content variables such as sex, violence and persuasive messages. But it is only until recently that more researchers are studying television as cultural and discursive texts.3 This departure from effects research to a critical and interpretive perspective is loosely categorized as TELEVISION STUDIES, which is still a field without well- agreed boundaries.4 As an emerging field, television studies have many unexplored areas; some of them are particularly obvious. Firstly, media scholars are more concerned with non- fiction than fictional content. Previous studies on television are skewed towards journalistic contents (Elliott, 1977)• Despite the fact that the most popular television programs are dramas and entertainment shows, they are much neglected by media researchers (Attallah, 1984). Secondly, there are more studies on television text than on production context. Many television studies are basically textual analyses of one or two television programs. Much have been written on television texts, but little has been written on how these texts are produced (Cantor & Cantor, 1992:4). What are the relation between television texts and their organizational contexts? What are the mechanisms within the organizational contexts that shape and influence the ideological content of television dramas? What are their selection and creation processes? The analyses of television text and its production context can enable us to answer these significant questions and understand better how television culture is produced and presented inside billions of television home across the globe in the late-20th century. 3. See Barker & Timberg (1991) for a review. 4. See Hartley (1992) Allen (1992) and Burn et al. (1989). 3 1.1 FORMULATION OF RESEARCH QUESTIONS This study atteiapts to explore the television organizational conteKt that shapes and influences the ideology of television dramas. Television Organizational Contexts in Hong Kong Television Organizational Context refers 七o 七he organizational setting in which television content is selected and developed under controlling and evaluative processes and finally produced into television program to meet the goal of the television organization. Right now, there are two significant models of television organizational context in Hong Kong: Commercial broadcast television which provides free television services and primarily relies on advertising revenues, and public broadcast television which provides television services by government funding.^ Commercial broadcast television: Hong Kong is served by two commercial broadcast TV stations, Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) and Asia Television Limited (ATV), which were established two decades ago. Broadcast TV has attained quick penetration and is now accessible to 98% of the population. The majority of programs provided by the two commercial broadcasters
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