The art of storytelling is one of the oldest forms of creative discourse. Apart from finding stories, the most important job in television is the construction of stories to have a broad audience appeal. This first-hand review of Missing Persons Unit, hereafter referred to as MPU, a prime time program on the Nine Network in Australia with immense audience appeal, is an original work by the executive producer (development and series producer Series One, executive producer Series Two and Three) based on an overview of two-and-a-half years of production on three series. Through a case study approach, this Masters project explores how story is constructed into a television format. The thesis comprises two parts: the creative component (weighted 50%) is demonstrated through two programs of MPU (one program for evaluation) and the academic component through a written exegesis (50%). This case study aims to demonstrate how observational hybrid series such as MPU can be managed to quick turn-around schedules with precise skill sets that cut across a number of traditional genre styles. With the advent of radio and then television, storytelling found a home and a series of labels called genres to help place them in a schedule for listeners and viewers to choose. Over recent years, with the advent of digital technology and the rush to collect the masses of content required to feed the growing television slate, storytelling has often been replaced by story gathering. Today even in factual series where a clear story construct is important, third party ‘quick fix’ specialists are hired to shape raw content shot by a field team, who never put their own work together and may never come into the edit suite during a project. This thesis explores the art of storytelling in fast turn-around television. In particular it explores the layer cake approach used in the production process of MPU, that enables producers of fast turn-around television to shepherd their own stories from field through to post-production. While each new hybrid series will require its own particular sets of skills, the exploration of the genesis of MPU will demonstrate the building blocks required to successfully produce this type of factual series. This study is also intended as a ‘road map’ for producers who wish to develop similar series.

This study examines two television soap operas and their consumption by a select group of teenagers. The soap operas in question, Neighbours and Home and Away, are produced in Australia and watched by large audiences in the UK. The study's broadest aim is to discover the nature of the relationship between the programmes and their teenage viewers. In order to meet this aim, the study combines textual analysis and audience research. Following a review of the textual analysis of soap opera, Neighbours and Home and Away are examined in detail as texts. The audience study is then introduced and located. The empirical study involved tape-recording interviews with groups of 13-16 year olds in one Edinburgh High School, and with individual teenagers in their own homes. In total, 50 teenagers were interviewed. The recurring findings of the audience study are analysed in detail. The final two chapters of the thesis contextualize the findings and conclusions of the textual and audience studies. A selective genealogy is provided which theoretically locates Neighbours and Home and Away and their consumption as cultural practices in self-government. It is argued that the two programmes should be understood as integral parts of a broad but specific arena for learning. It is argued that interviewees use Neighbours and Home and Away as cultural resources. They learn how to conduct themselves in intimate and social relationships, and, in particular, learn how to practise and reconstruct their gendered selves. It is argued that the model of analysis elaborated is valuable because: it best explains the specific nature of Neighbours and Home and Away and their consumption; it provides a way of moving beyond something of an orthodoxy in soap opera analysis; and it avoids the binary logic of some recent arguments about popular culture and social change.

This work deals with television audience measurement in the Czech Republic as a tool for planning advertising campaigns, television programming and support for corporate strategy of television organizations. The work presents the theoretical context of media research and summarizes the development of television market in the Czech Republic and the history of television audience measurement - from diary research project through the "Mediaprojekt" to the present method of measuring television audience with people metres that the author presents in detail. The work denotes the future of people meter measurement in the period 2013-2017 and compares Czech TV audience measurement project with similar projects in selected European countries. In the second part of work, author focuses on awareness about people meter project, both among the general public and professionals, using the online survey. The preparation of the research project is followed by its implementation and evaluation of results of this research. At the end of the work, marketing recommendations for the research agency are given, based on the results of research.

Obiettivo della tesi è stato quello di ricostruire una storia culturale della televisione italiana delle origini, concentrandosi sui percorsi attraverso i quali il medium è diventato parte integrante delle routine quotidiane del suo primo pubblico, cercando di dare senso a come la prima audience del piccolo schermo abbia sperimentato l’arrivo della televisione nello spazio della casa, nel corso degli anni di istituzionalizzazione del medium in Italia (1954-1960). Dopo una ricognizione della letteratura scientifica sul tema della domestication dei mezzi di comunicazione, della biografia culturale degli oggetti tecnici e dell’analisi storica delle “culture di visione” della tv, la seconda sezione della tesi prende in esame come il sistema dei media popolari (il discorso pubblicitario, il dibattito pubblico sulla stampa popolare, i paratesti aziendali della Rai) abbia attribuito significati alla televisione, "insegnando" al suo primo pubblico come collocarla nello spazio della casa. La terza sezione della tesi è dedicata a una ricostruzione storica del primo consumo televisivo domestico, svolta attraverso una ricerca etnografica condotta con venti interviste a testimoni che hanno vissuto in prima persona la prima diffusione dei ricevitori e la loro prima collocazione nello spazio della casa. / This dissertation is aimed to outline a cultural history of early Italian television, focusing on the pattern by which TV became part of its first audience’s daily routines, and trying to give sense of how the first public of the small screen experienced the arrival of the television in the space of their homes, in the years of institutionalisation of the new medium (1954-1960). After an overview of the scientific literature that has dealt with the topic of “media domestication”, cultural biography of technical objects, and historical analysis of television’s culture of viewing, the second section of the thesis examines how the system of popular media (mainly advertising, popular press, and broadcaster’s house organs) ascribed meanings to television as a domestic medium and advised its public how to use it. A third section of the dissertation is devoted to understanding the television viewing and consumption in historical perspective, through a ethnographic research developed with twenty in-depth interviews to witnesses that participated directly in the first diffusion and domestication of the TV sets in Italy.

The author aims to focus the work on the formation of audiences from the early days of television. The key is to introduce readers to the beginnings of broadcasting from the perspective of the viewer, not just the overview of the history of television broadcasting in Czechoslovakia. The studied time period is mainly the 50s of 20th century with a brief insight into the interwar period. In the end the author compares the past with current state of television entertainment. The work is methodologically processed by archival research and professional literature in combination with the oral history method using real interviews with narrators. This leads to a comparison of officially available information about the beginnings of television broadcasting with the testimony of their direct audience.However, the result of the research is a mutual agreement in the field of television technology (first receivers), as well as in the sphere of program distribution, in the social area and also it presents how popular was the television in leisure activities of population in the 50s­60s of 20th century.