Re-Locating the Spaces of Television Studies

Abstract

This paper will extend work originally presented in Pertierra and Turner 's Locating Television (2013) to argue that the reasons for which the demise of television was prematurely assumed can be understood and corrected by critically examining the geopolitics of television scholarship. The spaces from which television has been taken seriously as a topic of investigation have enabled a neglect of empirical and theoretical research that genuinely engages with the ways in which television might be understood as variously surviving, growing, innovating and even leading the current and future global media landscapes. The paper offers two ways in which television scholars might productively re-locate their spheres of concentration to understand the diversity of television worlds today: 1) empirically, it considers the case of the Philippines where broadcast television is successful in ways that could only be dreamed of by television executives in the so-called 'world centres' of the global entertainment industry. 2) theoretically, the paper refers to complementary attempts in sociology, literary and cultural studies to offer alternatives to Europe and North America from which scholars might locate the vanguard for modernity, globalization and innovation. It is by engaging with both of these strands in concert-empirically investigating television beyond the 'usual places' in such a way that responds to the call of cultural theorists to question our very assumptions about where television studies' 'usual places' should be, that more nuanced understandings, and fewer premature declarations, might be made about what television is, and where it is going.

Entertainment publics in the Philippines

“…The Facebook page for noontime show Eat Bulaga sits at number five on the list, with approximately 15 million followers. 3 As I have discussed elsewhere, Eat Bulaga offers a prime example of how television has successfully managed its transition to a digital and social media environment (Pertierra, 2016a). In many ways, Eat Bulaga is a classic example of 'traditional' television, as a nationwide hit television programme that has been on the air since 1979, combining comedy and light entertainment with competitions and games featuring members of their enthusiastic audiences.…”

“…One of the clearest and earliest examples of this was in 2015, with the recruitment of comic actress Maine Mendoza, who created viral videos on the platform Dubsmash. Her appearances on Eat Bulaga from 2015 onwards led to her consolidation as a major media celebrity, and in particular her 'love match' with fellow Eat Bulaga host Alden Richards was spun into a months-long televised courtship that had television audiences transfixed, and eventually led to a live concert event that prompted a world record of 41 million tweets (Pertierra, 2016a(Pertierra, , 2016b. The bringing together of participatory media platforms, viral celebrity and the old-fashioned power of television seemed to be a win-win situation for digital platforms and broadcast media, with each working to further enhance each other's success.…”