Toward a paradigm for media production research

This article was downloaded by: [New York University]On: 03 September 2013, At: 19:08Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UKCritical Studies in MediaCommunicationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcsm20Toward a paradigm for mediaproduction research: Behind thescenes at general hospitalElana LevineaaPh.D. candidate in the Department of Communication Arts,University Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53703Published online: 18 May 2009.To cite this article: Elana Levine (2001) Toward a paradigm for media production research:Behind the scenes at general hospital , Critical Studies in Media Communication, 18:1, 66-82,DOI: 10.1080/15295030109367124To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15295030109367124PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLETaylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information(the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor& Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warrantieswhatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions andviews of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. Theaccuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independentlyverified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liablefor any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly inconnection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionsCritical Studies in Media CommunicationVol. 18, No. 1, March 2001, pp. 66-82Toward a Paradigm for Media ProductionResearch: Behind the Scenesat General HospitalDownloaded by [New York University] at 19:08 03 September 2013Elana Levine•—This essay points to the dearth of media production studies conducted under thecultural studies rubric and calk for cultural studies of media production that fulfill themodels of cultural circulation theorized by Stuart Hall and Richard Johnson. It argues thatsuch a perspective must include analyses of both economic and discursive power. It presentsfive factors shaping the production process of a U.S. broadcast television network soapopera as provisional categories for scholarly exploration, as well as offering an in-depthlook at the soap opera production process and its cultural implications.CULTURAL studies of media havemade significant contributions toour understanding of the social andpolitical implications of mediated representation and the contextually-dependent meanings made of media by theiraudience members. The study of media production, however, has receivedmuch less attention from cultural studies scholars. This gap in research is notintrinsic to the field’s models of cultural circulation. In fact, models suchas those provided by Stuart Hall (1980)and Richardjohnson (1986/87) explicitly call for attention to cultural production and for the integration of production analyses and studies of texts,audiences, and contextual influences.In this essay, I argue that cultural studies scholarship can be usefully expanded and nuanced both by takingon more production-centered researchand by drawing upon the media production scholarship of those workingunder other theoretical and methodological perspectives (Gans, 1979;Tuchman, 1979; Cantor, 1971; Cantor& Cantor, 1992). The development oftheoretically and methodologically rigorous and sophisticated approaches toproduction studies can offer culturalstudies researchers, as well as communications scholars working within otherparadigms, new insights and heretofore unrecognized connections betweenmedia production, media texts, mediaaudiences, and the social contextswithin which they circulate. To demonstrate the benefits of such a broadenedstrategy, I here analyze the productionprocess of General Hospital, a U.S.broadcast television network daytimesoap opera, and suggest ways in whichproduction factors relate to questionsabout texts, audiences, and social contexts.Elana Levine is a Ph.D. candidate in theDepartment of Communication Arts, University The cultural studies bias towardanalyses of texts and audiences overWisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53703.Copyright 2001, National Communication Association67Downloaded by [New York University] at 19:08 03 September 2013CSMCproduction has existed to varying degrees throughout the field’s studies ofmedia. Inspired by Stuart Hall’s (1980)encoding/decoding model, various cultural studies projects of the early andmid-1980s did include industrial analyses along with their presentations ofaudience readings. But because themost revelatory aspect of Hall’s modelwas its recognition of contextuallyinfluenced variability in audience decoding, much of the scholarship in itswake focused disproportionately on audiences over industries. Studies of soapoperas, including those by Hobson(1982), Ang (1982), and Brown (1994),have exemplified this trend, examining such issues as the gendered addressof the soap opera text, the rewards andcosts of soap viewing, and the negotiations audiences make with the raced,classed, and gendered norms of boththe soap world and the social worldwithin which soap viewing occurs.This text- and audience-centered biashas understandable origins in culturalstudies history. Founded, at least inpart, as a reaction against economically determinist interpretations ofcommercial culture, cultural studies haslogically emphasized the resistivepower of audience readings over theconstraining forces of production. Atthe same time, an ongoing debate between political economy and culturalstudies has kept production-centeredscholarship largely in the hands of political economists, where it serves as areliable marker of difference from theirless classically marxist cousins.1 Withproduction-oriented scholarship practiced for so long by those more interested in the circulation of money thanthe circulation of meaning, it has beendifficult for cultural studies scholars toconnect production practices to thequestions of discourse and power (asideLEVINEfrom economic power) that the fieldmost frequently addresses. While cultural scholars readily admit that capitalplays a chief role in commercial mediaproduction, they tend to stop theirthinking there, failing to look for theroles of discourse, knowledge, and dailypractice in cultural production.In attempting to broaden the cultural studies approach to media alongsuch lines, this essay offers a case studyof soap opera production and therebyputs Richard Johnson’s (1986/87) circuit of culture model into practice.Johnson’s model poses a mutually influential relationship between production, texts, audiences, and contexts. Toget at this relationship, he urges a twopronged analysis of production. Theexamination of material means and thecapitalist organization of labor are oneprong, but Johnson suggests that production scholarship should also engage in exploring a range of culturalelements, such as rules of language anddiscourse and classed, raced, and gendered struggles over these rules as theyoccur within the production sphere (p.55). Having advocated this twopronged analysis of the production process itself, Johnson also suggests twomeans of relating production to theother spheres of cultural circulation.First, he argues for the examination ofproduction moments as distinct andparticular, as specific acts, not just general conditions. Secondly, and at firstglance contradictorily, he argues for alack of distinction between production,texts, and audiences. He urges, for example, careful analysis of the "productive" elements in cultural consumption,thereby retaining the cultural studiesinsistence upon active audiencehood(p. 57-58). Instead of negating his callfor the distinctiveness of production,this second suggestion avoids eco-68Downloaded by [New York University] at 19:08 03 September 2013TOWARD A PARADIGMnomic determinism while remainingmaterially grounded in audience experience and production practice.How the various aspects of the production process contribute to texts andshape possibilities for audience readings are the focus of the rest of thisessay. I here categorize, describe, andanalyze five major factors that shape aparticular kind of cultural production,U.S. broadcast network television production. Even more narrowly, I examine the production of one particulartelevision soap opera. The five categories I outline-production constraints,the production environment, production routines and practices, the production of characters and stories, and therole of the audience in productionhave grown out of interviews and observations I conducted on-site at the General Hospital studio. I spent two weeksof August 1997 on the set, in the control booth, and around the offices ofthe show. I chose this particular program largely because I had spent thelast sixteen years as a devoted viewerand thus had an immense backlog ofinformation about its storylines, style,and personnel. I gained access by writing a letter to the executive producer,explaining my academic project andmy interest in General Hospital. Thecoordinating producer called memonths later and invited me to visit.The ease with which these arrangements were made illustrates the potential accessibility of commercial production to interested scholars. The easewith which a long-time fan was able tobecome a critical researcher and a critical researcher was able to turn backinto a long-time (albeit somewhat morejaded) fan has helped me to analyzethe similarities and differences between audience experience and theproduction world in ways unavailableMARCH 2001to the more traditionally "objective"researcher. While the resulting analysis should offer useful insights to thoseinterested in television soap opera, myaim here is also to provide a model forfurther research of television production practices, and possibly even forother forms of commercial culture.Production ConstraintsThis first area of cultural productionfocuses on the production history andconstraints of General Hospital in orderto better understand the way the production process is shaped by its ownbackground. While production as awhole is seen as a limiting or constraining factor in theories of media culture,I here illustrate some of the large-scaleconstraints that shape not only the resultant text, but the rest of the production process, as well. While mainlyeconomic in origin, these large-scaleconstraints also have cultural impact.They influence the environment withinwhich employees work and the routines and practices they follow, as subsequent categories will demonstrate.This section focuses on the large-scaleconstraints of ownership structure, theprogram’s own production history, andthe status of soaps in the contemporarytelevision industry. While constraintscan be imposed by the histories andspecificities of the medium, the genre,the show, and the people who create it,as well, the three constraints I touch onhere were particularly salient duringmy research trip and seem particularlyformative to General Hospital.While most U.S. broadcast networktelevision programming is producedby independent production companiesthat license their products to networksfor a fee, General Hospital is whollyowned and produced by ABC/Disneyitself. While all of ABC’s soap operas69Downloaded by [New York University] at 19:08 03 September 2013CSMCare network-owned, they are the onlyone of the three major networks withthat arrangement. As Joe Montrone(personal communication, August 20,1997), ABC executive in charge of daytime production for the west coast explained, "Technically, everybody onthe show is an employee of ours,whether they’re contracted, daily hire,or full staff with benefits. They all getan ABC paycheck." Because of this,there is intense network involvementat every level, with ABC’s west coastexecutive in charge of daytime programming attending weekly story meetings between the executive producerand head writers, ABC Daytime publicity handling media relations, and ABCnetwork offices in New York holdingthe budgetary purse strings. As a result,when network policies forbid guns tobe held directly to characters’s headsor restrict the explicitness of sex scenes,the show’s staff sometimes feels creatively constrained. Yet the backing ofABC and its parent company, Disney,has benefitted the show by providing adegree of financial security less likelyfor a soap owned by an independentproduction company. According to oneGH staff member who had previouslyworked at a soap not owned by itsnetwork, General Hospital has largerbudgets for sets, wardrobe, and othersuch necessities than does this othersoap because the production companyowning the other show is unwilling (orunable) to spend as much, given itssmaller size.LEVINEto coordinating producer Marty Vagts(personal communication, August 12,1997):What we heard in those days was that ABCDaytime . . . was dropping 67°/o of the network profits. Right to the bottom line. Wewere clearing 67% . . . And the pack wasled by General Hospital. It was a giant cashcow . . . And General Hospital’had the ability to go to the well, the network well, andsay that we needed a prop budget of Xnumber of dollars or we needed a scenery[budget] of X number of dollars and wewould get it. The other shows did not havethat ability.The material benefits the show received during the 1980s continue topay off in substantial back-stocks ofwardrobe, sets, and props; in the contractually secured earnings of star performers; and in the current studio spaceitself, which was constructed specifically for the show in the late 1980s andis substantially larger than the studiosfor ABC’s New York-based soaps. Suchhistorically earned perks set GH apartfrom other soaps, allowing it an opulence that is increasingly rare in thefinancially strained soap industry ofthe 1990s and 2000s.Soaps are no longer the "cash cows"they once were for the broadcast networks. The soap opera audience, atleast as it is measured by Nielsen, hasshrunk drastically since the 1980s, achange attributable to the increasinglyfractured television marketplace andthe growing numbers of women in theworkforce. Both of these trends haveThe show’s own history also affects eroded the industry’s formerly solidits production, setting it apart from base of housewife viewers and haveeven the other ABC-owned soaps. The kept the genre from attracting newer,enormous success of General Hospital in young audiences, who, 20 years ago,the early 1980s not only changed the might have begun watching with theirsoap opera industry, but earned GHa mothers or grandmothers (Parney andcertain status with its network from Mason, 2000, p. 13). Since the earlywhich it still benefits today. According 1990s, soaps have lost more than 2070Downloaded by [New York University] at 19:08 03 September 2013TOWARD A PARADIGMmillion daily viewers, or about 25% oftheir total audience (Johnson, 1999, p.IE; McFadden, 1999, p. Dl). As aresult, today’s highest-rated soap hovers around a 7.2 rating while the lowestrated ones survive on ratings in the 2.0range. In August 1997, at the time ofthis study, General Hospital floated inthe middle of this range, rating a 4.6, atleast 6 to 8 million viewers less than inthe early and mid-1980s. As a consequence, ABC and the other networksare making less and less money onthese productions, resulting in decreased budgets for the shows. Onespecific result has been the virtual elimination of remote location shooting, apractice GH once engaged in up toseven times a year. Another has been areduction in the show’s clothing budget. According to costume designer BobMiller (personal communication, August 20, 1997), "Our budget next yearwill probably be the same budget thatwe had in 1986. And clothing has probably tripled [in cost]."As with any kind of constraints, theshow’s staff works to maintain a certainlevel of quality within these budgetarylimits. For example, the wardrobe department sells used clothing to a specialized television and film resale shop,returning $70,000 to their budget fromone year of these proceeds. Miller andco-designer Steve Howard make 3 or 4wholesale shopping trips to New Yorkdesign houses each year, purchasinghigh-fashion clothing a season in advance at much-reduced prices. Part ofthe reason they are able to do this isMiller’s 10 year employment historywith the show, a background that hasprovided him with a strong sense ofthe clothing many characters will need.But the wardrobe department’s abilityto reduce costs in this way is also assisted by the fact that, "Our gals are inMARCH 2001a size range from 0-2 to 6 mainly" (B.Miller, personal communication, August 20, 1997). The clothing they purchase will fit, or else can be slightlyaltered to fit, a number of differentactresses. Even the body types of performers shape the production process,their similar, extremely small, sizes allowing advance, wholesale wardrobeshopping that saves money and establishes a high-fashion, designer look.This variety of physical and fiscalproduction constraints illustrates just afew of the distinctive shaping factorsthat media scholars might consider inanalyses of television production.Though production is frequently understood as limiting or constraining textsand readings, these examples point tothe constraints within such constraints.The limits of commercial culture aremore complicated than simple profitmotivation or the exploitation of workers. They can affect studio size andbody size, the scope of the on-screenworld and the scope of femininity. Anunderstanding of such factors not onlyinforms the interpretation of texts, buthelps us to comprehend the prioritiesof capitalism, the imperatives of thetelevision medium, and the reasons behind the products the medium offers.De-naturalizing the television world inthese ways is the first step to not onlyknowing that world, but understandingthe particular ways its power is shapedand its money and meanings are circulated.Production EnvironmentLarge-scale industrial factors, and thespecific production details throughwhich they have an impact, necessarilyconstrain the rest of the productionprocess, even the environment in whichABC’s employees work. Exploring thisenvironment can uncover relevant eco-71Downloaded by [New York University] at 19:08 03 September 2013CSMCLEVINEnomic determinants, such as the role of on character motivation and story prolabor unions in the production pro- gression. While the director, who coorcess. But it can also provide insight to dinates discussion of his or her particuthe cultural issues at stake within pro- lar episode, tends to work on the sideduction situations. Hierarchies of gen- of the practical and technical, quesder and institutional positioning, for tions of character motivation inevitaexample, operate in General Hospital bly intervene, such as how vitally improduction and affect production rou- portant it is for the abandoned-at-thetines and practices, as well as the televi- altar Brenda, now in a precarioussion narrative constructed through the emotional state, to rid herself of allwork process. Two aspects of the pro- remnants of her wedding, even herduction environment that best bring to dress. This character motivation thenlight these economically and culturally requires practical back-up, as in theshaped processes are the overall work- decision to slightly re-design Brenda’splace milieu and the organizational hi- wedding gown to cover the undergarerarchy.ments she will wear as she sheds theThough the General Hospital work dress in her hurt and angry postenvironment functions like any other wedding scene.television production in many ways, itThese tensions and their practicalis significantly different, as is any soap, repercussions continue in daily producbecause of the continuous, unending tion. While the director must be connature of the work. With preemptions cerned with technical details of camerano more than one or two times a year placement, lighting, and sound, he orand production running only 2 to 3weeks in advance of airing, the staff she is also responsible for impartingmust produce an entire episode each performance notes to the actors. Whileday of the week. Thus, every task must these duties are no different than thosebe executed as efficiently as possible. of any television director, the pace atThe General Hospital studio must con- which the soap opera director muststantly negotiate high-level efficiency, work, shooting 25-30 "items," or scenetechnological intricacy, and creative se- segments, per day, makes concertedlectivity. The tenuous blend of a tight attention to all these factors imposproduction schedule and the emotion- sible. As such, the line producer (aally-charged material endemic to soap duty rotated among 3 of the show’soperas escalates the tensions already producers) gives the director notes onall these aspects throughout the shoot,present in any dramatic production.These contradictory working condi- though she tends to comment mosttions play out in the weekly production often on aesthetic and creative issuesmeetings, held one week in advance of over technical ones. While perforthe actual production. Here, issues up mance notes often originate with thefor discussion range from the kind of producer, they are usually relayed byundergarments needed for a scene the director or through the floor manwhere a character disrobes to the ma- ager at the director’s request. The direcneuverability of the cameras in a new tor is also freed from attending tooset. The meetings are a carefully bal- closely to performance because theanced combination of practical or tech- show has an acting coach on staff whonical details and creative speculation works with the actors off-set or confers72Downloaded by [New York University] at 19:08 03 September 2013TOWARD A PARADIGMwith the line producer and director inthe control booth.The distinctions in duty between thedirector and the line producer operateas gendered distinctions as well as efficiency-motivated time-savers. While allof the GH line producers are womenand most of the directors are men, thegendering of their duties is not determined by the workers who fill the roles.In the GH production world, bodilyaesthetics, questions of emotion, anddelicate personnel issues are distinguished from technical matters andtime constraints. The socially feminized aspects of production remain theexclusive domain of the producers andother "artistic" departments, while themore masculinized aspects are less selectively assigned. While the show certainly employs technical specialists inareas such as lighting and editing, theproducers can and do dictate decisionsin these areas. But technical personnel,often including the directors, remainfar removed from the producers’ reignover the more feminized concerns. Forexample, when an actress known forwanting excessive rehearsal timeslowed down a scene with questionsabout character motivation, the technical director discounted her concerns,commenting, "That’s not our business;that’s not what we’re here for," to hiscohorts in the control booth. The production staff surrounding him agreed,emphasizing their prioritization of efficiency above all else. The line producer handled the actress.The divisions in duty and agendaare also matters of positioning withinthe organizational hierarchy. Becausethe socially feminized areas are handledby those highest in the institutionalranks, the feminine is distinguished,but not necessarily disempowered, inthis production environment. The pro-MARCH 2001ducers have authority over so manyareas, and particularly more delicateones like talent relations, because oftheir pr…