ABSTRACT
Television production is a complex business, where multiple players share the risks of high-budget projects through a coordinated management of synergies, allowing single companies to become part of larger networks in order to create economic and cultural value from multiple points. This chapter uses the case of the US network series Nashville to explore the ways collaborative environments work, adapt, and evolve to keep a narrative ecosystem alive over a long period of time ultimately benefitting the series and all of its stakeholders. Ecosystems contain self-organized collaborative environments where agents form coalitions for common purposes, while at the same time being proactive and responsive for their own benefit. The chapter exemplifies this through Nashville. It illustrates how each part of the network is functional to the common goal of benefitting each other, but also how these parts are not irreplaceable, as narrative ecosystems are self-organizing, malleable, and scalable architectures that allow change, evolving over time in order to solve problems.
