Long form TV drama - Is a number of episodes which help create a narrative and tell a story to an audience. Usually 45 minutes to an hour, enough time to develop and have a narrative spin out.
US network broadcasters must satisfy their adverisers and hold market share which is controlled by federal regulaton. This is in contrast to US cable TV e.g. showtime, HBO etc. they dont rely on advertising as much therefore can take more risks with content and form.
The trouble with UK TV drama is that channels like BBC and ITV rely on genre-based, formula drama e.g. Heritage and crime drama. Whereas Sky co-opted success of LFTVD with Sky atlantic and could broadcast shows such as games of thrones. Commissioning remains tightly controlled.
Audiences
- Rise of binge-watching started with DVD
- Move from 'water-cooler' TV to 'shared universe' fandom
- Easter eggs, long running jokes, obsessive fans realise this
Why do audiences love LFTVD?
- high quality drama
- multiple episodes, hours, years
- content can be dark and difficult but innovative
- now attracts some of the best and innovative writers and actors
- time shifting, easy accessible
- keeps people invested
- lots of creativity
- characters change surprising but natural
- not just a couple networks, loads of networks competing
Forms and conventions
- genre - e.g. thriller, mystery, supernatural, period drama etc.
- themes - e.g. relationships, coming of age, violence, manipulation etc.
- Narratives
- characters - drcages/personality/role in narrative
- Production values - (camera, editing, sound) can range for $4.5 million dollars per episode to $45 million a series
- Viewing methods/platforms - e.g. Netflix, YouTube, Now TV, iTunes store, Google play etc.
Vocab
Easter eggs - is a secret message, joke or reference cleverly hidden in a scene i.e. Scar from the lion king features in the disney film Hercules
Timeshifiting - In broadcasting, time shifting is the recording of programming to a storage medium to be viewed or listened to after the live broadcasting.
VOD - video on demand, is an interactive TV technology that allows subscribers to view programming in real time or download programs and view them later.
PVR - personal video recorder, TV-recording device that stores the programmes you have recorded onto a large internal hard disk drive
streaming - listening to music or watching video in 'real time', instead of downloading a file to your computer and watching it later.
terrestrial TV - originally the method by which the significant majority of viewers in the UK received television
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