As a result of changing cultural, economic and technological factors, television always exists in a perpetual state of transformation. The fragmentation of the mass audience and the disintegration of the network oligarchy catalyzed the emergence of a multi-channel universe and niche cable markets in the post-network era. HBO, perhaps the most successful premium cable channel to emerge during the changing TV landscape, implemented a subscription-service economic model, enabling it to produce uncensored, commercial free content unavailable on broadcast television. HBO has since been labeled as the leading purveyors of quality, auteurist-centered TV. For this report, I analyze how HBO has been constructed in the realm of academic discourse. Using Enlightened and showrunner Mike White as a case study, I examine how the series conforms to and deviates from HBO's established brand and reflects the network's struggle to redefine itself in the post-network era. Ultimately, I aim to reveal the mythologized, idealized and manufactured culture of production at HBO and examine how journalistic discourse surrounding the series presents the HBO brand identity in a state of crisis and transition. / text

This thesis draws on queer theory, media representation, intersectionality and news values to conduct a combined queerfeminist visual and critical discourse analysis examining how representation of same-sex attraction and queer relationships in British teen television—and the media’s reaction to them—has changed between 1994 and 2019.  The queerfeminist visual analysis compares two scenes featuring same-sex attraction between male teenagers in two TV shows: Byker Grove (1989-2006), which featured a chaste but angrily rejected kiss in 1994 and Sex Education (2019-2023), which featured an unseen but implicitly enjoyed blow job in 2019. The Byker Grove scene was the first gay kiss on British children’s television. Sex Education has been praised for its diverse LGBTQ+ cast and storylines. Two series are thus valuable bookends for this quarter-century-spanning but limited comparative study. Supported by a brief content analysis of national and local press coverage of Byker Grove from 1994 and online coverage of Sex Education on the selected newspapers’ websites, the queerfeminist critical discourse analysis compares four news items reporting on each TV show in contrasting British newspapers: populist “red top” The Sun and liberal “quality” paper The Guardian.  The combined study finds that 1) there are visual similarities in the framing of each scene but significant differences in narratives and messaging, especially when decoded by different audiences, and 2) the social discourse has shifted significantly from one of outright opposition to invisibilisation on the political right and from silence to praise on the left.  The thesis fills a gap in queer television studies scholarship that has mostly overlooked British teen/children’s television in favour of American TV shows and makes recommendations for further research, particularly in the fields of audience studies and social sexual script theory with a focus on LGBTQ+ teen and adult viewers.

Pesquisa em Comunicação na área de Meios de Processos Audiovisuais que estuda as estratégias de grade de programação de domingo na TV aberta brasileira. Ênfase no domingo em virtude de ser o dia com maior número de telespectadores ligados e por ser um dos dias com maior visibilidade dos produtos veiculados. As principais linhas teóricas utilizadas na interpretação da pesquisa tratam da formação do hábito de ver televisão, do contrato afetivo entre o fluxo da grade de programação e o telespectador e do Princípio da Razão Durante através da teoria do Metáporo. Texto multidisciplinar que reúne teóricos de Comunicação, Estudo de TV, Estudos Culturais, Sociologia, Filosofia para construir um corpo teórico que trata de entender estratégias utilizadas pelas emissoras para montar a grade de programação e de como a grade se torna um específico da TV, um produto audiovisual único e fluído e uma forma discursiva estratégica das empresas de comunicação. / Research in Communication within the Audiovisual Media Process area focused on the broadcast Sunday Brazilian TV programming strategies. It emphasizes the Sunday programming due to be the day with the largest number of viewers watching TV and due to one of the days that gets more visibility to the media products and production. The main theoretical lines used in the research are about the habit of watching TV, the emotional contract established between the programming flow and the TV viewer and also the Princípio da Razão Durante (Ongoing Principle) through the Metaporo´s theory. Multidisciplinary text gathering theories from Communication, TV Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology and Philosophy to build a theoretic body of work to understand the strategies used by the TV stations and networks to form the programming grid and how the grid becomes TV´s specific language, one fluid and exclusive audiovisual product and also an strategic discursive form belonging to the communication enterprises.

Pesquisa em Comunicação na área de Meios de Processos Audiovisuais que estuda as estratégias de grade de programação de domingo na TV aberta brasileira. Ênfase no domingo em virtude de ser o dia com maior número de telespectadores ligados e por ser um dos dias com maior visibilidade dos produtos veiculados. As principais linhas teóricas utilizadas na interpretação da pesquisa tratam da formação do hábito de ver televisão, do contrato afetivo entre o fluxo da grade de programação e o telespectador e do Princípio da Razão Durante através da teoria do Metáporo. Texto multidisciplinar que reúne teóricos de Comunicação, Estudo de TV, Estudos Culturais, Sociologia, Filosofia para construir um corpo teórico que trata de entender estratégias utilizadas pelas emissoras para montar a grade de programação e de como a grade se torna um específico da TV, um produto audiovisual único e fluído e uma forma discursiva estratégica das empresas de comunicação. / Research in Communication within the Audiovisual Media Process area focused on the broadcast Sunday Brazilian TV programming strategies. It emphasizes the Sunday programming due to be the day with the largest number of viewers watching TV and due to one of the days that gets more visibility to the media products and production. The main theoretical lines used in the research are about the habit of watching TV, the emotional contract established between the programming flow and the TV viewer and also the Princípio da Razão Durante (Ongoing Principle) through the Metaporo´s theory. Multidisciplinary text gathering theories from Communication, TV Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology and Philosophy to build a theoretic body of work to understand the strategies used by the TV stations and networks to form the programming grid and how the grid becomes TV´s specific language, one fluid and exclusive audiovisual product and also an strategic discursive form belonging to the communication enterprises.

Through exploring the use of documentary style in a selection of contemporary American comedy series, this thesis closes in on the question whether texts that stylistically differ from traditional sitcom can still be regarded as part of the sitcom genre. The contemporary American TV series that are being analyzed are The Office, Arrested Development, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Michael J. Fox Show. As the series’ place within sitcom becomes apparent, the analysis ultimately leads to a critical investigation of the term “comedy verite.” Questioning the concepts applicability for the American series and their development leads to the investigation of new definitions. This analysis of contemporary televisual styles reveals a myriad of deeper issues and elucidates how stylistic developments point towards broader developments of the TV medium – towards a medium more and more defined by, or even drenched in, “reality.”