Branding Television

自20世纪80年代以来，美国和英国的电视经历了戏剧性的变化。曾经是由少数几个国家频道主导的广播媒体，现在有数百个频道，如果你不想在播出时观看节目，你可以下载它，在电脑或手机上观看。这些变化给美国和英国的电视行业带来了新的挑战，它们不得不应对日益激烈的观众和收入竞争。这些变化的一个结果是，两国的电视行业都接受了品牌化。电视公司现在有了品牌战略，每个电视频道都有一个品牌标识，通过标志、口号和广告来传达。甚至连节目现在都被打造成品牌，旨在鼓励观众忠诚度，甚至可能是为了购买DVD和其他与节目相关的商品。在过去的25年里，品牌化一直被认为是美国和英国电视行业的关键发展，但没有关于品牌如何在电视中使用的持续研究，以及品牌的采用对我们对电视行业和电视文本的理解以及它们在日常生活中的作用有什么影响。这项研究将通过提供第一个深入的研究来批判性地检查和比较美国和英国电视行业采用品牌的情况来解决这一差距。品牌化与消费文化的强化有关，在消费文化中，越来越多的日常生活领域被商业公司为了经济利益而创造的品牌商品所主导。电视在日常生活中扮演着中心角色，它不仅提供娱乐和信息，还传达和探索我们作为一个社会的文化感和认同感。因此，重要的是要问一问，品牌的采用对电视有什么影响。在英国，品牌的采用与公共服务广播衰落的担忧不谋而合。与此同时，美国电视业已开始制作和出口被视为高质量电视缩影的节目，如《黑道家族》。通过比较和对比品牌在美国和英国的使用，这项研究将询问品牌的采用在多大程度上支持或破坏公共服务和商业目标。它将通过研究不同电视公司的品牌战略，品牌化对节目制作的影响，以及公司如何利用品牌试图控制与电视公司、频道和节目相关的含义(例如将BBC与体面、高质量的英国广播联系在一起)来实现这一点。它将批判性地研究品牌如何通过鼓励观众忠诚度和使他们的产品在混乱中脱颖而出来帮助电视广播公司应对竞争日益激烈的媒体环境。然而，它也将通过研究观众与广播公司直接交流的网站(通过信件、在线论坛等)来分析观众协商和竞争与电视品牌相关的含义的方式，这提供了一幅比行业战略本身所建议的更分散的关于品牌角色的图景。研究旨在帮助我们理解美国和英国电视在过去25年中的变化，提供新的概念工具来帮助分析当代电视并推动电视研究领域的发展，并增强我们对品牌和品牌在日常生活中作用的理解。

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.