'Quality TV Series' as Discourse and Practice: Self-Theorizing in the German TV Series Industry

该研究项目计划从制片人的角度，特别是从制片人的角度，研究德国连续剧小说的当代转型和趋势，重点是所谓的优质电视剧。它的目的是分析不同的系列剧制作人如何通过不同的、经常是非正式的实践形式的自我理论以及通过他们的系列剧制作来领导关于高质量系列剧的讨论。重点放在故事发展的阶段，这一阶段构成了内部质量话语的关键背景和对象。尤其是作家、制片人和电视编辑占据了中心舞台。正如一个重要的假说所述，这些演员在特定的国家背景下改编所谓的高质量电视剧，并利用它来谈判媒体电视的更广泛的转型以及不断变化的制作过程和结构。该项目填补了电视和电视剧研究中的基本研究空白：首先，在对高质量电视的学术分析中，德国和欧洲电视剧的总体休会及其制作背景。这一领域的大部分工作集中在美国的产品、它们的发展、它们的框架条件和几个假定的原型上。此外，该项目通过展开当代德国虚构系列剧的研究，更新和扩展了对德国虚构系列剧的研究，几乎没有进一步探索当地电视剧行业的变化时间，以及德国电视史上可能的一个重要阶段。目前在内容、叙事、广播公司和专员方面的变化与更广泛的欧洲和全球，或者至少是西方对电视的转变密切相关。此外，该项目填补了德语世界在制作研究方面的学术空白，并将其应用于那里的电视和电影行业。一种相应的方法在电视和电视剧研究中带来了新的视角：更容易观察到仅仅通过文本分析无法涵盖的方面，如经济状况或发展中的项目。此外，通过在生产研究中的定位和借助媒体民族志工具，德国系列研究的分析也得到了有条不紊的拓展。该项目希望具体起草如何将生产作为除了中间表现及其接受之外的另一个层面来审查，以及如何在这一方面涵盖合作、谈判和等级制度。

The research project plans to investigate contemporary transformations and tendencies of serial television fiction from Germany in particular from the viewpoint of producers and with emphasis on so-called quality series respectively Quality TV. It aims at analysing, how various series makers lead a discourse on quality series through self-theorizing in form of different, frequently informal practices and through their series productions. The focus is on the phase of story development that constitutes both a crucial context and object of the internal quality discourse. Especially writers, producers and television editors take centre stage. As an important hypothesis states, these actors adapt the so-called quality series in a specific national context and use it to negotiate broader transformations of the medium television and changing production processes and structures. The project fills elemental research gaps in television and series studies: first the general recess of German and European series und their production contexts in academic analysis on quality TV. Most works in this field concentrate on productions from the USA, their development, their framework conditions and on a few supposed prototypes. In addition, the project updates and expands studies on fictional series from Germany by unrolling the contemporary, hardly further explored time of change in the local series industry and a possibly important phase in German television history. The current changes in respect of content, narration, broadcasters and commissioners are closely linked to broader European and global or at least Western transformations of television. Furthermore, the project fills the academic void of production studies in the German-speaking world and applies them to the television and film industries there. A corresponding approach leads to new perspectives in television and series studies: Aspects that cannot be covered by mere textual analysis, such as economic conditions or projects in development, are observed more easily. Additionally, by the positioning in production studies and the recourse to media ethnographic instruments the analysis of German series studies is broadened methodically. The project wants to concretely draft how production can be examined as another level besides the medial representation and its reception, and how cooperation, negotiations and hierarchies might be covered on this side.