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[16134087 - Communications] It is their job to make sure that the long-term vision for the show stays intact_ Using insights from the television format industry to rethink the concept of media events.pdf (123.72 kB)

“It is their job to make sure that the long-term vision for the show … stays intact”: Using insights from the television format industry to rethink the concept of media events

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journal contribution
posted on 2019-11-06, 11:33 authored by Michael SkeyMichael Skey
The concept of media events continues to generate widespread debate among scholars around the globe. Studies that have challenged the concept’s functionalist foundations have undoubtedly sharpened our thinking. Conversely, approaches that have sought to expand the concept tend to confuse rather than clarify. In this paper, we argue that events that are planned, anticipated, and involve external organizations in their design demand a specific set of analytical tools. Furthermore, we draw a further distinction between one-off events and those that are cyclical in nature, with the latter being theorized using insights from studies of the television format industry. This approach not only focuses much needed attention on the production side of media events but also on the struggles between different interest groups (rights-holders, event hosts, media producers). We illustrate our arguments by drawing upon ethnographic material from the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest.

History

School

  • Social Sciences and Humanities

Department

  • Communication and Media

Published in

Communications

Volume

47

Issue

1

Pages

32 - 49

Publisher

De Gruyter

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Publisher statement

This paper was published in the journal Communications and is available at https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2019-0159. The final publication is available at www.degruyter.com.

Acceptance date

2019-11-05

Publication date

2020-04-15

Copyright date

2020

ISSN

0341-2059

eISSN

1613-4087

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Michael Skey. Deposit date: 5 November 2019

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