This article reports on a collective project by the Midlands Television Research Group into the changing character of weekday evening programming in the 1990s on British terrestrial television between 8.00 and 9.00. Over the decade, there has been a growth in ‘factual entertainment’ and a decrease in analytic documentary, situation comedy and variety. Factual entertainment comprises hybrid genres such as ‘docu-soaps’, CCTV footage-based programmes and lifestyle and make-over programmes. Each of the four sections engages with one aspect of the scheduling in the slot. Rachel Moseley discusses the gendering of the slot, focusing on BBC’s Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver. Catherine Johnson discusses pets, vets and children in documentary programmes. Helen Wheatley looks at the treatment of ‘real crime’ in the slot and Charlotte Brunsdon discusses historical antecedents to some of the lifestyle programmes.
Rachel Moseley is Associate Professor in Film andKeywords: address, afternoon, everyday, housewife, schedule, women These days it seems retrograde to think about television through the organisation of the schedule, despite the fact that the industry still works hard to secure it, and that viewing figures are nurtured through prime scheduling space. As television scholars, we have become much more interested in the way that television has been liberated from time and space as it has been converted to digital media to be downloaded to various devices, avoiding the television set altogether. This is despite evidence from viewers' use of social media and programmes like Gogglebox (2013-present) which insist on the significance of co-presence and the schedule i . Yet at the centre of traditional arguments about the specificity of television has been its particular relationship to spatio-temporal arrangements: the domestic space of consumption and its quotidian rhythms. As Brunsdon has argued, the configurations of 'woman', and more specifically 'the housewife', have been central to that narrative, and it has been central to the feminist research agenda on soap opera ii . However, we have rarely reflected on the shifting status of those definitions throughout broadcast history or their relationship to other genres. In this special issue, we take the afternoon as a specific scheduling slot through which there has been, and continues to be, a deliberate and shifting address to women at home. This allows a particular purchase on the historically struggledover category of woman and the related, often contradictory, discourses of feminism and femininity. Importantly, this special issue of Critical Studies in Television also makes a case for historical television research to look back at programming rendered invisible by the turn MOSELEY, WHEATLEY AND WOOD: 3 away from the everyday and the ordinary and towards the 'high end', 'quality' content that thrives in the broader digital environment.'Daytime' television has not really been noted for its critical acclaim, relying mostly on a diet of soap opera, magazine programmes, quiz shows and talk shows, as well as news, sport, and schools' programming. 'Daytime' is a remarkably broad portmanteau term for a large portion of the broadcast schedule. Despite the shifts towards personalised viewing arrangements, and the consequent side-lining of issues related to scheduling, 'daytime' has
This article explores the ways in which television registered, and broadcast, colonial discourse in the specific context of Kenya and Britain in the 1950s. Focusing on the wildlife programming of the husband and wife team Armand and Michaela Denis as its case study, an examination of programmes such as Filming in Africa (BBC, 1955) and On Safari (BBC, 1957–65) is offered, looking at the ways in which these programmes negotiated the transition between colonial spectacle and a cosy, domestic address for British television. The article will explore what these programmes reveal about Britain's ‘imagined Kenya’ in the final years of colonial rule, and argue that it is possible to trace a colonial lament in this form of popular entertainment on the cusp of the decolonisation of Kenya. These programmes are thus interesting as examples of colonial television, that is, domestic television broadcasting made outside the UK by programme-makers who present themselves as being simultaneously ‘at home’ and ‘abroad’ on the BBC. Importantly, the programmes aimed to bridge a perceived gap between the ‘outside world’ of colonised ‘wild’ space and the ‘inside world’ of television's interior, domestic spaces. A history of the Denises’ programmes is reconstructed by intertwining archival research into scripts, set designs, publicity materials and production notes with analyses of the programmes themselves.
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