A Political Economy of Formatted Pleasures

Despite all their apparent diversity and difference, most successful television formats ¹ are very similar. They offer a very limited palette of audience pleasures ² by concentrating, for the most part, on entertainment rather than information or education. Formats are about fun. Moreover, formats promote a particular kind of fun. This chapter argues that, by promoting audience pleasures based in the pursuit of individual and materialistic goals, most television formats are consonant with a dominant orthodoxy which sees markets as the only way to organise society. ³ This elective affinity between format pleasures and free market ideology, however, does not come about through any deliberate design. Rather, it is an unintended consequence of television production's response to economic and practical necessity. In their form, content and production practices formats are pre-adapted to the demands of a globalised media market place. As we will see here, this peculiar commercial logic has given formats a peculiar signature in terms of what they can and cannot represent.