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

该研究项目计划从制作人的角度调查德国系列电视小说的当代转变和趋势，并分别强调所谓的优质电视剧。它的目的是分析，如何不同的系列制造商领导的话语质量系列通过自我理论的形式不同的，往往是非正式的做法，并通过他们的系列产品。重点是故事发展的阶段，构成了一个重要的背景和对象的内部质量的话语。特别是作家、制片人和电视编辑占据了中心舞台。正如一个重要的假设所述，这些行为者在特定的国家背景下改编所谓的高质量系列，并利用它来谈判电视媒体的更广泛的变革以及不断变化的制作过程和结构。该项目填补了电视和连续剧研究中的基本研究空白：首先是德国和欧洲连续剧及其制作背景在学术分析中的普遍空缺。该领域的大多数作品都集中在美国的作品、它们的发展、它们的框架条件以及一些假定的原型上。此外，该项目更新和扩大对德国虚构系列的研究，通过展开当代，几乎没有进一步探索的时间变化，在当地的系列产业和一个可能的重要阶段，在德国电视历史。目前在内容、解说、广播公司和委员方面的变化与更广泛的欧洲和全球或至少是西方的电视转型密切相关。此外，该项目填补了德语世界制作研究的学术空白，并将其应用于那里的电视和电影行业。相应的方法导致电视和连续剧研究的新视角：不能被单纯的文本分析，如经济条件或项目的发展，更容易观察到的方面。此外，通过在生产研究中的定位和借助媒介民族志工具，德国系列研究的分析得到了系统的拓展。该项目希望具体地起草如何将生产作为除了媒体代表及其接受之外的另一个层面进行审查，以及如何在这方面涵盖合作，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.