‘Quality Series’ and their Production Cultures: Transnational Discourses within the German Television Industry

Abstract

For several years now, the quality of fictional series from Germany has been reflected upon critically in the feuilleton as well as within the television industry there. This paper takes a closer look at this industry discourse and expounds how TV makers from Germany negotiate ‘quality series’ in a transnational manner. Their understandings and attributions of such programmes are accompanied with references to foreign, mainly US-American examples, opposing German TV fiction. These discourses within the German television industry trace the state of German television output – and its arguable lack of quality – back to historical developments and structures. With the historical argumentations, the practitioners identify the ‘local’ and ‘global’, which is why their discourse can be described not only as transnational, but as glocal, too. Transnational and glocal aspects can also be found in their discussion of production cultures. Several voices suggest that specific, historically developed structures would differ from other markets and would complicate the broader establishment of ‘quality series’ and their alleged production modes. In this, much more than TV critics in the feuilleton, the practitioners deal with the quality of production, as well as content, and expand their discourse on ‘quality series’ to a broader negotiations of hierarchies in production networks.

Keywords

• German TV
• quality series
• media industry studies
• production studies
• story development