The methodology section begins with a description of the personal reasons as to why I chose to undertake a study on creativity at the BBC; Silverman (2005) calls this, ‘The Personal Context’ (p.307). Maxwell (1996) offers the same advice similarly labelling it ‘The personal purpose’ (p.15). Following the personal context, justifications are made as to the research methods that were chosen for the thesis. This is based in two parts, Why this is a Qualitative Study and Why this is a Case Study. The remaining five sections are based on the design of this particular case study.
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3.1.1 The Personal Context
By including a ‘personal context’ in the methodology chapter, an ontological explanation is offered as to why I have chosen to research broadcast creativity at the BBC. In so doing, I am legitimatising my methodology by explaining my broad research interests on a personal level - based on experiences and occurrences in my life. The personal context should be used to clarify my own personal aims and reasons for undertaking this thesis; more generally, to answer the question, what is the research for? Maxwell (1996) believes such an account can strengthen the research design by realising that self-reflection has ‘important consequences for the validity of the conclusions’ (p.15).
My interest in television production derives from the milieu of my childhood. My father had been an actor in Cyprus working in theatre, cinema and television. As a child I remember people from the arts were either always at our home or we were at theirs. Thespians were the most common guests and friends of the family. Directors, writers, painters, producers and musicians were not excluded however from the group. I would sit quietly and unnoticed, listening to them discuss about scripts and stories, and possibilities of ‘getting the work done’. On some occasions I would mutely observe their round-table script readings and listen to their worries and frustrations. While most children spent their summer Sundays at the beach, I would choose to stay home and watch my father while he wrote and edited screenplays or rehearsed lines of upcoming projects. For me, the most interesting [and entertaining] part of my father’s work was when he discussed television with his colleagues.
There was always talk of the ‘pilot’ or the ‘concept’; sometimes, I would notice that something as elementary as the ‘logline’ would take days to perfect. Would it work? Would Mr. or Mrs. so and so agree to it? How could we increase our chances of getting the ‘nod’?
For the most part, these queries remained unanswered. It was all based on trial and error and the only thing that mattered when pitching an idea, even for the Public Service Broadcaster29, was whether the programme had a chance of achieving high ratings.
Producers spoke of ratings frequently, so too did television executives; actors and actresses on the other hand, dreaded it. They were, more than any other group, suspicious of the creeping commercialisation of Cypriot television. According to actors and actresses of that generation, although more television would help stabilize their careers in what at the time was a very precarious industry, most of them had started their careers in theatre and quality was important to them; they welcomed the prospect of stability but feared the survival of quality drama programming, Greek Tragedies - god forbid, of theatre itself. They brought up issues such as audience loyalty to ‘quality’ literature, and the unfortunate consequences of commercial television (ratings) that lead to the dumbing-down of audiences. Admittedly, all of this flagged my curiosity.
29 At that period the only available broadcaster in Cyprus was the publicly owned Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CYBC). CYBC is a dual-funded organisation.
That is, a tax system similar to the license fee, and advertising. The first private channel, Logos, was launched in Cyprus in 1992 (see Nicoli, 2009).
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A decade or so later while studying in the United States, I would bring up issues of consumerism and the dumbing-down of audiences to my lecturers; my words would usually fall on deaf ears. The curriculum did not necessarily involve such discussions. There were a few exceptions; sporadic discussions of Ben Bagdikian’s Media Monopoly (1983 first edition), Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) and Herbert Schiller’s Culture Inc., The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression (1989) spring to mind. However, these exceptions were far and few between. The curriculum was, in my humble opinion, unfairly tipped towards the private sector; everything in communications was taken at face value.
Advertising is advertising, ratings are ratings, public relations is public relations and media economics is as it is, and that was that. We were being trained to take on a future role in an emerging global capitalist information society without necessarily engaging actively in asking why things were as they were. When I sometimes attempted to raise these issues in class discussions, I often felt like the wet blanket since I was merely interrupting the class from more ‘productive’ discussions. I felt I needed more; and my curiosity stood firm. I spoke to a lecturer at the time and he gave me a few suggestions about what I should do to assuage this inner desire for answers. One suggestion was to enter a more balanced graduate programme. Therefore, after conducting some research while simultaneously working briefly in advertising in the USA to earn some money for graduate school, I ended up in the Communications Policy programme at City University, London.
At City University, I was fortunate to be taught by Jeremy Tunstall, Ali Rattansi, Howard Tumber and Petros Iosifidis. During my time there, I came across Ien Ang’s, Desperately Seeking the Audience (1991) (reviewed in detail in chapter one). Reading the book essentially led to this thesis. Ang accentuated many of my own thoughts about the capricious nature and evident weaknesses of the ratings system, and by extension, of media economics more generally. Unlike my undergraduate education, things were not taken at face value. I became intrigued with how Ang separated the institutional from the academic, especially when it came to audience research. One significant area raised in Ang’s book was the burgeoning threat of new technologies on Public Service Broadcasters all over the world. Ang’s arguments were echoing those of three other significant writers that inspired me from my time at City’s graduate programme; specifically, Nicholas Garnham, Peter Golding and Graham Murdock. Their writings intrigued me. What I found most appealing from their work was how they critically took on the wave of liberal regulatory decisions occurring throughout the 1980s and 1990s and how that was affecting the communications industry. I was happy to be in the programme digesting all this enlightening information, but the more I progressed, the more disheartening it all appeared to me. The decline of public service broadcasting seemed inevitable and along with it, its core Reithian values – to inform, to educate and to entertain. Since my father had worked for most of his life in public service broadcasting, coming to grips with its decline saddened me. Admittedly, my affinity towards PSB played an important role in my decision to pursue a PhD later on.
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Vis-à-vis my graduate work, I became content and returned to Cyprus armed with my newly acquired knowledge. I felt it balanced out my prejudiced, consumer-oriented undergraduate degree. I began work in the field of advertising and marketing almost immediately with the help of my experience from having worked for a stint in advertising in the US and from holding a Master’s degree from London. I now began to witness how the ‘ratings game’
worked from the inside. It was Ian Ang’s thesis all over again, this time empirically and firsthand. This exacerbated my urge to learn more about the feeble media industry from a critical perspective. It brought to the surface feelings I had had as a graduate student. I continued to read work on the changes occurring in communications as well as on international political economy (e.g. Jeffry Frieden’s excellent Global Capitalism, 2002). It was dawning upon me that I wanted to take this a step further. I decided to return to London to talk to various universities about what I needed to do to become a research student. I had exchanged an email with Sonia Livingstone at the London School of Economics and I was going to try and meet up with her as well as with scholars from other universities. I naturally decided however, to start my expedition for a PhD programme by going back to City University. As it turns out, this was a significant decision. I remember it been early September and the university was fairly quiet. I was extremely fortunate to find Professor Frank Webster sitting in his office working oh his PC. I had remembered Professor Webster from his book, Theories of the Information Society (1997, 2006 second edition), that I had used extensively during my time as a graduate student. Although we did not have an appointment, Professor Webster was kind enough to discuss with me in depth what it took to become a research student and what I needed to do to prepare. He totally won me over and my decision was made (admittedly an unusual route to finding a supervisor). With Petros Iosifidis and now Frank Webster at City University, it became my only choice. I returned to Cyprus with thoughts of a proposal and methodologies going through my mind.
Possible research projects ranged from advertising organisations and how they function, to ratings and its methodological weaknesses (a theme echoing Ang’s work, 1991, 1995). The more I read however, the more interested I became in television production and the creative work done behind the scenes. In a way, it was a nostalgic urge to study how professionals similar to my father, work in today’s more fast-paced and competitive television environment.
This is the art/capital contradiction (see chapter one and two of this thesis) mentioned throughout Ryan’s work (1992). I found Todd Gitlin’s Inside Primetime (1983) in particular, very interesting and started looking at how I could do something similar. I was gradually moulding some significant questions and hypothesis. Specifically, how do television organisations attempt to minimise the uncertainties involved in television production? And how do they make their choices to give certain programmes the ‘green light’? I knew from my own experiences, that the industry’s reliance on audience research in order to answer the aforementioned question was growing. Marketing and promotional techniques too were gradually playing a more significant role in assuaging the industries insecurities of launching
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new programmes every year. I drafted a proposal and sent it along with an application to City University.
Initial Period of Research
I left my job and moved to the UK to begin my research at City University without much research experience and maybe even more ominously, very few contacts in the UK. It is because of this that one might begin to realise the oddity of my thesis topic. Why does a Cypriot that lives and works in Cyprus, wish to conduct research and write a PhD thesis on the BBC? Furthermore, with so much written on the BBC, how could I possibly make a contribution? Choosing a research topic on Cyprus would have been fundamentally easier due to my contacts in the Cypriot media I had managed to accumulate over the years. I was adamant however on conducting fieldwork in the UK. I had decided early on to do this since I believe the British broadcasting sector is effervescent, creative and yet in a strange way, very elusive. Any research I pursue in Cyprus after such a challenge will, I believe, be comparatively easier to conduct.
Admittedly, my initial proposal was not on how the BBC stimulates creativity of original television programmes. As I mentioned above, my initial research queries were on how the industry as a whole in the UK seeks to diminish the uncertainties involved in original programme development. After a year of reading the literature and methodology surrounding these topics, I had decided on breaking down my thesis along the following lines:
• Chapter 1 – Introduction
• Chapter 2 – Methodology
• Chapter 3 – The Independent Production Sector
• Chapter 4 – The BBC and Channel 4
• Chapter 5 – ITV and Five
• Chapter 6 – Conclusion
After approximately one year of further conceptualising the research and covering ground on the literature review, I felt ready for fieldwork. While preparing for the fieldwork, I had been notified of a vacancy at Nicosia’s Intercollege (now University of Nicosia) in the Department of Communications. As I was told at the time, they were looking for someone with experience similar to mine; if I could prove I was working towards a PhD and I did well in the presentation and interviews, I would have a chance to be hired. In Cyprus, with only six universities of which only two have a communications programme, I felt it was an opportunity I could not let pass by. I prepared for the presentation and to my good fortune I was offered the job. In hindsight, I can say that both the department and my supervisors at City University supported me when I told them about the situation. Subsequently, I have now
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being teaching at the Communications Department of the University of Nicosia for the past four years.
The Fieldwork and Reconceptualising my Thesis
While teaching, I felt I could carry out the research during Christmas, Easter and summer breaks. Indeed, this is how I managed to complete my fieldwork. I began in August 2006, and from then on every opportunity I got (breaks), I returned to London to continue. As I began working in this manner I soon came to realise that I would have difficulties gaining access during the ‘set’ period I had to undertake the interviews. I had managed to do so initially through several contacts my supervisors gave me. I believed that by snowballing my way into the industry I should not have any serious problems with access. While very rarely did I get turned away, many potential informants would say they were busy, and to therefore contact them again at a later date. As it turns out, this later date usually meant I could not be there since the semester would begin for me and I would therefore return to Cyprus.
Although I had conducted a few important interviews outside the BBC, (notably David Bergg – Head of Strategy at ITV, and Justine Kershaw – at the time, Controller of Factual at Five), it was becoming clear to me that researching the whole audiovisual sector and how they stimulate creativity was not within my capabilities while also holding a full-time post in Cyprus. I spoke to my supervisors about my reservations and they also agreed I should reconceptualise the thesis. As I continued with the fieldwork, I managed to get an interview with Ms. Emma Swain, at the time commissioning editor of Specialist factual at the BBC (now Deputy Controller of Knowledge), and I began looking more closely at the BBC’s commissioning process. I had read the work of Georgina Born (2004), and also some work on new public management (Hood, 2001; Harris and Wegg-Prosser 2007), and decided to look further at the possibility of conducting the thesis on only the BBC and not the industry as a whole. As I read more, I grew more confident that I could reconceptualise my thesis in this manner. Conducting a PhD on the world’s most well-known public service broadcaster was not a bad alternative. As mentioned above, I am an enthusiast of public service broadcasting and on a personal level I felt comfortable adapting the research.
Consequently, I forwent the initial idea of conducting a research on all free-to-air television and independent production, and began refocusing my strengths towards the BBC; it would become a single case study of how the BBC stimulates creativity of its development process of original television production.
3.1.2 Why this is a Qualitative Study
The next logical step in structuring a thesis once a research topic and its main questions have been decided upon and the research has been conceptualised (see chapters one and two), is to choose the research approach (Silverman, 2005). While some scholars (for example Mason, 2002), note that although various ‘younger’ disciplines with firm
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interdisciplinary biases such as media studies and cultural studies tend to rely a priori on qualitative approaches, this study should not automatically fall into this category without offering supporting facts.
Consideration was taken of the fact that there are no ‘best’ or ‘ideal’ approaches (Arbor and Bjerke, 1997). What essentially drives what will be the most fitting research methods are the questions it seeks to answer (Miles and Huberman, 1994; Silverman, 2005). As Mason (2002) remarks, ‘once you have formulated your research question, your research is already set on certain tracks in relation to its design and strategy…you are likely already to have begun thinking about what methods you might use to generate data’ (p. 25). Additionally, each research design is based on a philosophical platform of whether it should be positivist or interpretative. Rubin and Rubin (2005) point out, ‘a research philosophy indicates how research ought to be conducted, by whom, and with what degrees of involvement or dispassion’ (p.21). One of the key points they argue is seeking to find the answer to the question, ‘what does the truth mean?’ (ibid.). This study answers this question with the realisation that the truth regarding the development process of original television programmes and how creativity is stimulated is seen differently by different people. In other words, there is no objective truth. This research will lend support to the diverging opinions regarding whether the decisions being made at the BBC will improve the creativity of original television programmes. It does so by answering the question, how does the BBC stimulate creativity of original television programmes. Had this study been conducted by another researcher, different conclusions might have been reached. Subsequently, the research design is based on an interpretative constructionist approach. It is for this reason that I believe all steps regarding how to strengthen its validity (for example by including the aforementioned personal context), needed to be taken.
One of the most important issues when deciding which theoretical framework one should approach when researching social phenomena is how the source material will be treated by the researcher. Alasuutari (1995) argues that the researcher that uses qualitative methods sees the participant as an ‘informant’ giving meaning to something and not like ‘respondents’
who are obliged to answer a fixed set of questions (a questionnaire) that are usually already given a standard set of options to choose from. Maxwell (1996) similarly argues that one of the main strengths of qualitative methods is “understanding the meaning” of the informant’s perspective (p.17). Consequently, most qualitative research deals with a selected number of informants (as opposed to a proportion of the population). However, before further highlighting the aptness of qualitative research approaches towards this study’s research questions, attention needs to be drawn to the significance of both quantitative approaches and triangulation research. Patton (2002) comments that the main advantage of quantitative research is that it allows a researcher ‘to measure the reactions of a great many people to a limited set of questions, thus facilitating comparison and statistical aggregation of the data’
(p.14). Based on the strength of reaching large sample sizes and using probability sampling,
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quantitative approaches are rightly considered as being adequately representative of gaining information with varying confidence levels of large populations. This significantly strengthens the generalizability of a study. Conversely, qualitative approaches have been criticised for their lack of generalizability (e.g. Berg, 2001; Patton, 2002). This is so because the numbers of informants in qualitative approaches are typically so few, that running any
quantitative approaches are rightly considered as being adequately representative of gaining information with varying confidence levels of large populations. This significantly strengthens the generalizability of a study. Conversely, qualitative approaches have been criticised for their lack of generalizability (e.g. Berg, 2001; Patton, 2002). This is so because the numbers of informants in qualitative approaches are typically so few, that running any