Restyling Factual TV
Restyling Factual TV: the Reception of News, Documentary, and Reality Genres, 2007, London: Routledge, 280pp.'It seems that Reality TV, documentary, and news are all kind of mixed up.
Restyling Factual TV is about understanding genres in relation to each other and in relation to popular audiences. It takes as a starting point the idea that factual television is being restyled, that various kinds of news, current affairs, documentary and popular factual genres are part of a turbulent time in broadcasting. The boundaries between fact and fiction have been pushed to the limits in various popular factual formats, the cross pollination of styles increasing the pace of change in news, current affairs, or documentary.
What happens if we look at factual television from the position of the viewer? Using multimethod research with representative samples of British and Swedish audiences, a picture emerges of a viewer navigating their way through a busy, noisy, and constantly changing factual television environment.
Viewing strategies show how audiences are dealing with the restyling of factuality. They classify factual genres so as to make them knowable and manageable. Striking similarities between British and Swedish viewing practices highlight an overarching social and cultural order to factual genres, with public service genres at the top and popular genres at the bottom. Reality TV is off the factual scale and has been re-classified as reality entertainment.
Another strategy for factuality is that of genre work. Genre work involves immersive and reflective modes of engagement with factual genres, allowing viewers to personally respond to programmes and themselves in conscious and unconscious ways, and often in contradictory ways. These viewing strategies highlight how audiences engage with and reflect on various representations of reality.
Through looking at factuality in the round we can see how audiences are centre stage in the transformation of factual television.
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