Building Successful and Sustainable Film and Television Businesses

A Cross-National Perspective

Eva Bakoy, Roel Puijk, Andrew Spicer, Eva Bakoy, Roel Puijk, Andrew Spicer, Eva Bakoy

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781783208203
• eBook ISBN: 9781783208227
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art & Business

This edited collection focuses on the production cultures of successful small and medium-sized (SME) film and television companies in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK, based on a three-year research project, 'Success in the Film and Television Industries' (SiFTI) funded by the Norwegian Research Council. It explores case studies of multiple businesses that have thrived over a period of at least five years and have made several successful productions: both in terms of popularity and critical acclaim. Chapters investigate their histories and evolution, contextualising these companies and the people who work for them within macro-economic and cultural conditions. This anthology goes further – to compare and contrast these companies cross-nationally, in order to seek common elements that may explain how they have been able to survive and thrive.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Eva Bakøy, Roel Puijk and Andrew Spicer

This collection is based on a three-year research project, Success in the Film and Television Industries (SiFTI) funded by the Norwegian Research Council. The project had two basic purposes: 1) To illuminate the operations of sustainable and successful film and television companies in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom; investigating their histories and evolution, the particular challenges they face and how they deal with them, the people who work for them and the men and women who run them; 2) To compare and contrast these companies in order to find out if there were common elements in how they conduct their business that might explain why they had been able to survive and also thrive. In contradistinction to the conventional focus on media conglomerates (Chan 2005; Fitzgerald 2012; Kunz 2007), or large-scale institutions such as Hollywood studios (Bordwell et al. 1985; Caldwell 2008; Dangcil 2007) or public service broadcasters such as the BBC (Bloomfield 2008; Born 2004; Davies 2001; Küng-Shankleman 2000), the focus of this collection is on micro-, small-and medium-sized companies (MSMEs), which the European Commission calls the ‘engine of the European economy’ (2015: 3).¹ The collection’s focus on European companies is also a departure from the main trajectory of media industry studies, which have usually analysed American businesses (e.g. Gitlin 1983). It is therefore a contribution to the increasing academic attention that is now being given to European media production (see for instance, Bondebjerg et al. 2015; Meir 2016; Szczepanik and Vonderau 2013).² However, even within studies of European media, this volume’s comparative, cross-national approach makes it distinct from the bulk of cultural/creative industries studies.

MSMEs are not only economically important, but also culturally significant. They are thought by cultural policy advisers to counteract media imperialism by providing a crucial contribution to democracy through enabling a multitude of different voices to be heard (see Curran 2011; Paterson et al. 2015). Often regarded by policymakers as more flexible, creative and innovative than their larger counterparts, MSMEs are perceived as a viable economic model in the shift from the Fordist period of mass production to a post-Fordist one in which niche markets are targeted and profits can accumulate through the ‘long tail’ (Anderson 2009). When MSMEs are concentrated in one locality – as part of ‘creative clusters’ or ‘cultural hubs’ – they have been seen as important to regional and urban development as potential replacements for dying industries (e.g. Florida 2004).³ Although our research is connected to these broader issues, it recognizes that the audio-visual industries are a special case and therefore that investigation and analysis should focus on the particularities of film and television production. And, as the authors in this collection contend, despite the arguments about cultural ‘convergence’ and a ‘networking’ culture in which companies are increasingly interdependent, there remain clear differences between these two industries. Therefore, analysis should focus on the specific conditions of production that obtains within each, as well as their common challenges and interrelations.

The companies discussed in this book were selected on the basis of two criteria for success: they have survived for over five years, and they have produced film or television programmes that have received critical acclaim and/or been popular with audiences. This admittedly wide and basic definition of success includes two very common business criteria: profitability and the ability to remain economically viable over time. However, some of the companies have experienced periods of considerable financial uncertainty because of the project-based character of film and television production. The definition also implies customer satisfaction and cultural capital in the form of peer recognition and awards.

Success is a complex concept and other less tangible but equally significant measures come into play in media management. These can include keeping your employees happy and content, making a meaningful contribution to the community, campaigning for social or environmental issues and developing audio-visual media as artistic expressions. There are also what can be termed subjective or personal success criteria, which include making a living from doing something one loves, using one’s talents, achieving personal goals, meeting interesting people or simply being happy and content in one’s work. A recent study of over 150 Dutch SME owners showed that most placed personal satisfaction and good relationships above commercial criteria. It showed that success criteria varied and were derived from the values owners held, which often evolved over time and differed according to the age and size of the firm (Gorgievski et al. 2011).

Our focus on ‘success’ might be considered unduly celebratory and that we are ‘[a]cting as temporary partisans of media organizations’ (Hesmondhalgh 2007: 48; Hesmondhalgh 2014). Our sympathetic attitude, while far from uncritical, is partly the result of the collection’s focus on MSMEs. The companies discussed in this volume can be collectively identified as struggling entrepreneurs that contribute to media diversity rather than being dominant or predatory players in the media marketplace; their success contributes to the general cultural health of the media. We will return to a discussion of the diverse meanings of success in our concluding chapter, where the comparative dimension of our analysis is discussed at length. We argue for a family resemblance between these successful companies. They are unique and different in many respects, but at the same time connected by several overlapping similarities.

One common contextual factor, particularly for European media, is the range and importance of the various international collaborations, partnerships and co-productions in which media companies engage – see, inter alia, Chalaby (2016), Finney (2010), Fontaine and Kevin (2016), Goldsmith and O’Regan (2005), Guback (1969), Hilmes (2014), Moran (2013), Morawetz et al. (2007), Steemers (2014), Weismann (2012) and Wheeler (2004). However, we argue that operations of the smaller film and television companies in this study make most sense in relation to the specific national contexts in which they are embedded. Hence this volume is organized into separate sections about each of the four nations studied by the SiFTI project, all of which begin with an overview chapter that explains the general organization and characteristics of the film and television industries in each of the selected countries.

Theoretical approach

This collection is a contribution to the rapidly expanding field of media industry and media production studies (for overviews see Banks et al. 2016; Cottle 2003; Havens and Lotz 2011; Holt and Perren 2009; Mayer et al. 2009; McDonald 2013; Paterson et al. 2015).⁴ Studies of media industries/media production draw on a broad range of disciplines and analytical approaches (Freeman 2016; Hesmondhalgh 2009, 2010, 2013; Paterson et al. 2015) and have a long, if not always acknowledged, history (Mayer et al. 2009; Wasko 2015). One of the most influential approaches has been political economy, defined as ‘the study of the social relations, particularly the power relations that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources’ (Mosco 2009: 2) and which focuses on the ‘fundamental forces and processes at work in the marketplace’ (2009: 24). This view informed Richard Caves’ Creative Industries (2000) and its persuasive concept of unstable and conflicted ‘contracts’ between art and commerce.⁵ With its interest in macro processes and underpinning structures, political economy has been described as the ‘jet plane view’ of the media (Havens et al. 2009).

This collection is indebted to political economy studies in its emphasis on how the various national film and television industries are shaped by overarching political, economic, social and cultural factors, including how national media regulations and policies influence the operations of the companies. However, in this approach the detailed characteristics of their actions remain unanalysed. In addressing this issue, this collection is indebted to work in cultural studies, which understands culture as a site of struggle, negotiations and attempts to achieve hegemony. Cultural studies provide a ‘helicopter view’ that highlights the details and complexities not visible from the jet plane view of political economy (Havens et al. 2009: 239). In doing so, this approach challenges a monolithic view of the media industries by foregrounding the role of individual agents within larger media structures, both high-placed managers and ‘below the line’ workers (Bennett and Strange 2015; Caldwell 2008; Havens et al. 2009; Holt and Perren 2009; Johnson et al. 2015; Mayer 2011). This collection employs a granular attention to detail to give a concrete sense of the actual working practices of specific companies and to foreground the role played by particular agents in their organization.

However, the SiFTI project’s interest in company success and survival sets it apart from the cultural studies tradition, with its basically Marxist concentration on the political dynamics of cultural life and its potentially subversive or suppressive practices. The research that this book is based upon has taken a more anthropological cast (Schlesinger 2015), characterized by close-textured ‘thick descriptions’ (Geertz [1973] 1993) of specific instances derived from detailed, qualitative interviews and observations. However, as Georgina Born has argued, this does not mean ‘going native’ and adopting the position of the informants, but maintaining a ‘critical analytical distance’, achieving a ‘kind of double consciousness – both empathy and distance’ that focuses on ‘individual and collective agency’. Born argues that such close-grained attention is ‘a particularly good way of learning about the complexities of the object. It is also a good method for interrogating and reworking the structural readings of macro process that can be derived from political-economic analysis’ (Born 2000: 409, original emphasis). Contributors to this volume have attempted to achieve this ‘double consciousness’, a point that will be discussed further in the section on methodology.

Analysing companies’ production/organization cultures

As already indicated, the particular focus of this collection is on analyses of micro-, small- and medium-sized film and television companies. Robert Picard argues persuasively for the importance of a close-grained study of individual media companies:

A weak understanding of the theory of the firm has led numerous media observers who do not take a company perspective to make sweeping generalizations about how media companies operate, without discriminating between companies that make very different choices in pursuing profit and company values. These ignore many of the complexities of company organization and governance […] assume a simplistic firm structure, operation, and performance, and present a deterministic view of the ability of managers to fully control firms and their performance.

([2002] 2011: 2)

A key aspect in the understanding of how modern media firms operate in a more holistic and nuanced sense is the concept of production cultures that has informed all the chapters in this collection. Contributors have been particularly influenced by John T. Caldwell’s analysis of the belief systems generated by the different occupational roles in the film and television industries in Los Angeles. Caldwell understands production cultures as an interpretive system informing self-reflexive processes:

Film and television […] do not simply produce mass or popular culture […] but rather film/TV production communities themselves are cultural expressions and entities involving all of the symbolic processes and collective practices that other cultures use: to gain and reinforce identity, to forge consensus and order, to perpetuate themselves and their interests, and to interpret the media as audience members.

(2008: 2, original emphasis)

Because Caldwell is not particularly interested in the operations of specific media companies, material drawn from organization, business and management studies has been equally important to contributors of this book. Edgar Schein’s Organizational Culture and Leadership (2004) informs several chapters in this collection. Schein defines culture as:

[…] a pattern of shared basic assumption that a group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relations to those problems.

(2004: 17)

Schein is interested in the underlying reasons that cause companies to pursue certain strategies, and his concept of culture as a shared pattern of assumptions is similar to Caldwell’s concept of culture as an interpretive system. Both definitions conceive culture as a set of learned ideas that form our perception of our surroundings. They also share the viewpoint that cultural analysis has to deploy a multiplicity of sources and methods (Drake 2014; Freeman 2016; Vonderau 2013) and not just rely on interviews of the social group in question without taking the statements of the organization members at face value. Another common thread that we have found helpful is the analytical distinction between internal integration and external adaptation conceiving companies as dynamic entities, constantly changing and adapting to internal pressures and external forces. Schein argues:

All group and organizational theories distinguish two major set of problems that all groups, no matter what their size, must deal with: (1) survival, growth and adaptation to the environment; and (2) internal integration that permits daily functioning and the ability to adapt and learn. Both of these areas of group functioning will reflect that larger cultural context in which the group exists and from which are derived broader and deeper basic assumptions about the nature of reality, time, space, human nature, and human relationships.

(2004: 18)

The main difference between their approaches is that Schein’s goal is instrumental, aiming to improve a company’s efficiency, whereas Caldwell seeks to provide a critique of how such cultures operate. He is also more sceptical about the difficulties in analysing company cultures and the film and television industries in general.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: The Film and Television Industries in Norway
• Chapter 3: Leadership Practices in the Norwegian Film Industry
• Chapter 4: Co-Produced Television Drama and the Cost of Transnational ‘Success’: The Making of Lilyhammer
• Chapter 5: Different Places, Different Stories? The Importance of Place in Regional Film and Television Production
• Chapter 6: An Introduction to the Danish Film and Television Industries – A Small Country Successfully Producing Drama
• Chapter 7: Zentropa: A Successful Danish Film Company – ‘A State of “Emergency” Is a Good Position to Be in’
• Chapter 8: The Means and Meanings of Being Independent: Competing Truths in the Television Company STV
• Chapter 9: Embracing the International Market: The Dutch Film and Television Production Landscape in Transition
• Chapter 10: Innovation in the Independent Dutch Film Production Companies Column Film and Rinkel Film
• Chapter 11: The Professional Is Personal: A Comparison Between the Dutch Television Production Companies JVtv and BlazHoffski
• Chapter 12: The Finance and Production of Independent Film and Television in the United Kingdom: A Critical Introduction
• Chapter 13: Staying Alive as an Indie: How Three UK Companies Build and Sustain Their Businesses
• Chapter 14: ‘It’s Our Property and Our Passion’: Managing Creativity in a Successful Company – Aardman Animations
• Chapter 15: Conclusion
• Notes on Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover