ABSTRACT
Broadcast TV adopted the studio production methods that were developed in the classic Hollywood cinema, and imitated by film industries elsewhere. However, it represents a considerable refinement of these methods towards a more industrialised kind of production, directed towards the production of series and serials rather than the single ‘prototype’ film that was typical of the classical cinema. Broadcast TV also involves a different form of production financing from cinema. Its financing is characteristically a concern of the broadcast institution as a whole, rather than that of any individual programme or series. TV’s industrial production involves a detailed breakdown of work as far as possible into separate functions that require a reasonable amount of skill; a corresponding management structure to co-ordinate this divided labour; a production geared towards repetition; and a financing that is geared to the total output of a given period rather than running on a programme-byprogramme basis. This makes television a relatively secure industry, able to produce profits consistently in its commercial sectors, however insecure it may be for those who work in it, especially at its more interesting fringes. As an industrial structure, broadcast TV is more developed and integrated than cinema ever was, even in its heyday of industrial production. This
stability makes TV institutions even more prone to aesthetic conservatism than Hollywood cinema. This is markedly true of British TV which, until recently, provided hardly any areas for really adventurous work.
