Branding Television

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Since the 1980s television in the US and the UK has undergone dramatic changes. Once a broadcast medium dominated by a handful of national channels, there are now hundreds of channels, and if you don't want to watch a programme when it is broadcast, you can download it and watch it on your computer or mobile phone. These changes have brought new challenges to the television industries in the US and the UK, who have had to respond to increased competition for viewers and for revenue. One consequence of these changes is that the television industries in both countries have embraced branding. Television corporations now have brand strategies and each television channel has a brand identity that is conveyed through logos, slogans and advertising. Even programmes are now being constructed as brands designed to encourage audience loyalty and perhaps even the purchase of DVDs and other merchandise associated with the programme. Branding has been identified as the key development within the US and UK television industries over the past 25 years, and yet there are no sustained studies of how branding is used in television, and what impact the adoption of branding has on our understanding of the industry and texts of television and their role in everyday life. This research will address this gap by offering the first in-depth study to critically examine and compare the adoption of branding in the US and UK television industries. Branding has been linked to an intensification of consumer culture, in which more and more areas of everyday life are dominated by branded commodities created by commercial companies for financial gain. Television plays a central part in everyday life, offering not just entertainment and information, but also conveying and exploring our sense of culture and identity as a society. It is therefore important to ask what impact the adoption of branding has on television. In the UK the adoption of branding has coincided with fears of the decline of public service broadcasting. At the same time, the US television industry has begun to produce and export programmes, such as The Sopranos, that are considered the epitome of quality television. By comparing and contrasting the use of branding in the US and the UK, this research will ask to what extent the adoption of branding supports or undermines public service and commercial aims. It will do this by examining the brand strategies of different television corporations, the impact of branding on programme production and the ways in which corporations use brands to attempt to control the meanings associated with television corporations, channels and programmes (such as the association of the BBC with respectable, quality, British broadcasting). It will critically examine the ways in which branding helps television broadcasters to deal with the increasingly competitive media environment by encouraging audience loyalty and making their products stand out from the clutter. However, it will also analyse the ways in which viewers negotiate and contest the meanings associated with television brands by examining sites where viewers communicate directly with broadcasters (through letters, online forums, and so on), which offers a more fractured picture of the role of branding than is suggested by the industry strategies themselves.The research aims to contribute to our understanding of the changes to US and UK television over the past 25 years, to offer new conceptual tools to assist in the analysis of contemporary television and move the field of television studies forward, and to enhance our understanding of the role of brands and branding in everyday life.