TIPOLOGÍAS EXISTENTES

The commissioning process requires the Natural History Unit to look both to its external associations and to its internal expertise. There are internal debates over programme quality; as Alastair puts it "what constitutes the best programme, at the best time, made by the best people". These have to be balanced against external competition for BBC resources, co- production opportunities, scheduled slots and audience attention. The commissioning process focuses upon the links between macro structures and micro practices, as people within the Unit have to compete to get ideas commissioned, to work where they want and to do the programmes that they want. The commissioning process also focuses upon how decisions are made over how to evaluate the constraints and opportunities in the networks of natural history film- making. Some of translations of entities into the Unit are stronger than others, and are therefore more predictable, and the weak points in the network emerge as key points of contestation as members of the Unit seek representation.

I want to try and extend traditional applications of network analysis to think about how these choices are made. Network analysis characteristically involves looking backwards and following actors historically, as they make associations and build their worlds - actor networks which are constructed of entities which can be made stable, mobile and combinable. I want to suggest that ANT can be used to reflect upon the way that decisions over the future are made, using a language of risk. To recap briefly, the translation of the entities comprising the networks of the Natural History Unit requires two things. An entity must first be enrolled so that they participate in the network, and then their behaviour must be controlled to make their actions predictable. For linkages of the Natural History Unit to scientists, animals, controllers, co-producers and audience to be successful the actors must share explicit interests, which involve redefining goals or the ability of the Unit to 'colonise' the world of others.

The historical chapters of the thesis have demonstrated shifts in these networks as actors are enrolled through methods of inscription, personal contacts, financial arrangements and audience figures. These chapters also demonstrate the different strategies through which the Unit has attempted to make these associations predictable through their relationships to science, definitions of programme genre, directing techniques, and the management of the Unit. However, not all of these are associations are as stable as others, and in looking to the future, members of the Unit frequently use a language of risk to articulate positions of certainty and points of uncertainty. Despite Anthony's protestations of the ahistorical nature of television, there is a clear relationship between the past, present and future within this language of risk. This history defines the scope of risks the Head of the Unit, controllers and co-producers are prepared to take, based upon the value for money demonstrated by established the successful genres, existing skills base, and the committed audience for wildlife films.

The day to day processes of doing television are necessarily now ones of risk. The rise of new performance indicators in television, means that the success of any programme can only ever be assessed once it has been broadcast, and audience and sales figures compiled and costs deducted. Previous programme makers may have looked to the educational aspirations of public service broadcasting, the professional broadcasting ideologies or the accelerating image quality internal to the industry as a way of defining the success or failure of a programme. However, the rise of 'Birtism' with its emphasis upon value for money, balancing costs, sales and ratings, means that success can never be assumed. Measures of success now depend on a calculation that involves audience figures and overseas sales, only calculable after transmission, and therefore never fully incorporated into the production process. Value for money is only finally calculated over a year later in the Programme Performance Reviews. The decline of non-monetary criteria for evaluating programme success, and the rise of this form of cost- benefit equation brings the Unit directly into an arena of attempting to manage and minimise risks.

Certain areas of the network are rendered very fragile, and therefore more risky, when trying to make decisions over the performance of future programmes. This is particularly demonstrated over the inability of the Natural History Unit to take the audience into the network prior to production. The audience is essentially unpredictable and uncontrollable and there are ambiguities around their preferences. Film-makers engage in various strategies for interpreting audience figures after transmission (Ang, 1991; Ettema and Whitney, 1994). I want to suggest however, that the increased importance of audience figures in the BBC means that film-makers are also involved in various strategies for claiming to represent the audiences before transmission. Notions about audience characteristics and preference become internalised within individuals in the Unit, and collectively within the Unit hierarchy, and form an important context in which discussions about risk take place.

A language of risk was used extensively by people in the Unit when discussing the commissioning process. Co-producers no longer take risks by supporting unproved formats. Controllers are not in a position to take risks with license fee funding. Safety emerges from the established associations between co-producers, controllers and audiences measures, and means that it becomes difficult to innovate beyond the genre of blue-chip film-making through which these translations are enacted. The approval of the controllers and co-producers, and the flow of money, are all based upon notions of the audience which are constructed as conservative, as Adrian implies

"It's certainly is getting more and more difficult to make new programmes, though we are probably fairly safe at the moment, because the public seem to like the programmes, therefore the controllers do, and, the co-producers do, so there is money coming in" (Adrian, interview 26.7.95).

The majority of the programmes put forward during the editorials of 1995 reflect this tendency towards safety. For BBC1, the main aim of the editorials would be to obtain another commission ofWildlife on One. The programmes in this strands are half hour, expensive, blue chip films, and the Unit would expect to get about 13 programme commissions for one series. They have an average audience of 8.4 million, the highest figure for a documentary strand on BBC1, and they are expected to perform well against face stiff competition from The Billon ITV. Other parts of the blue-chip package would be series and the specials. These deliver prestige and an impact in the schedules at about twice the cost of aWildlife on Oneprogramme. The controllers look to the Natural History Unit for an annual event likeLife in the Freezerand The Private Life of Plants. Ideally for the controllers, this would be fronted by David Attenborough. Mid price and cheaper ideas would be targeted at the evening slots outside of a Wildlife on Oneseries, for example, looking at British wildlife likeNature Detectives, or trying something a bit different like Natural Neighbours. Other targeted slots would be the Sunday evening slot, the television equivalent of the Sunday afternoon walk; the seasonal tie-ins at Christmas, Easter, New Year and Valentine's day, as well as children's television. There are also a number of live events that are packaged for BBC 1.

The core objective of BBC 2 editorials would be to secure a commission for theNatural World. This series has an average audience of 3.7 million, with a production cost per hour of less than one-third of a Wildlife on One, though the cost to the BBC is same. This is due to lower co- production investment in the Natural World, which is an increasing problem for the strand. There are other blue-chip mini series aimed at BBC2, as well as Wildlife Showcase which shows bought-in films from abroad. The Natural History Unit also looks for programmes that could tie in with the BBC2's leisure slot at 8.30 in the evenings. Cheaper ideas for BBC2 have a wide range including live programmes, programmes using more library footage, and sometimes more journalistic or environmental programmes. Also targeted at BBC2 would be themed nights, and ten minute shorts; something unusual to attract attention in the schedules that would not get a place on BBC1.

However, as well as positioning programmes within the established slots on BBC1 and BBC2, the Unit also needs to innovate within these formats and the ability to innovate depends on keeping ideas continually flowing through the Unit, despite the restrictive commissioning process. Alastair Fothergill suggests that he is able to manage this process as a creative process because of the number of people working in the Unit. Different people will have different skills, and the size of the Unit means that it is conceivable to fund development time for potential ideas. Alastair suggests that this confidence means he can take risks with members of the Unit:

"The fact that there is almost 170 people working here now, if you include all the Wildvision people allows you to take risks; it allows you to develop more formats; it allows you, through size, to have confidence I think is the key word" (Alastair, interview 16.6.95).

Alastair Fothergill's ability to take risks is, however, dependent upon the flow of ideas through the Unit. At the beginning of each meeting I attended he made the perennial plea of all media workers for more ideas; as he puts it "we live and breathe off ideas". There were calls for ideas on every kind of programme at every conceivable cost, and also for ideas on how to further cut costs. This flow of ideas is in turn dependent upon individual members of the Unit constantly looking out for ideas: "You’ve got to have your ears and eyes open and you get ideas from everywhere. From people, from reading, from seeing another film. Talking. And if you’re not, if your feelers aren't out all the time, you shouldn’t be in the industry" (Elizabeth, interview 25.7.95).

It from this flow of ideas that future programme ideas and skills can be developed. The Unit is managed to try and reap the benefits of being a large organisation, where ideas can be complied on a collective basis, information and ideas shared and television innovation pushed forward, rather than pursuing the inclinations of individual naturalists or producers. Ruth explains how this differs from the past, that programmes are now "an assembly of different ideas from

different people. [...] So, you know, now the whole is sort of greater than the sum of the parts and ideas coming in from everyone, rather than just the mandarins putting ideas in which maybe you know were getting a bit tired" (Ruth, interview 17.7.95). Ideas are now less the property of an individual and there may be some cost to an individual's ability to focus upon their own programme ideas, but this is seen as good for the Unit as an entity. So long as Unit members are confident and happy with what they are doing, this situation seems to be of mutual benefit. However, the success of pooling ideas is dependent upon maintaining people's belief and security in their jobs; success is dependent on people feeling they are genuinely contributing to the whole: Charlotte emphasis the positive:

"People are here because they love the job and they love doing it, they are not here to make loads of money, because you don't make loads of money. Which is wonderful makes for, you know, a great sort of team spirit and a sort of unity in the unit really" (Charlotte, interview 13.7.95).

However, the position of individual members of the Unit is becoming less stable. People are on short contracts, often only for the duration of one production. Some members of the Unit to whom I spoke felt this move toward short-term contract work had reduced the training they would have received; certain people felt the lower pay in the BBC compared to the independent companies was no longer balanced by sufficient security; yet others felt that the new flexibility expected of junior staff was not matched in programme-making. The emphasis upon performance indicators has changed the creative atmosphere and sense of community within the Unit. I want to suggest that there are two implications to these changes. Firstly, the insecurity of members of the Unit threatens this rhetoric of collectivity, with the result that ideas are actually less likely to be shared. Secondly, those people who are able to negotiate the securities and restrictions in order progress in the Unit, are those members best placed to claim to traditional representations of the audience and to continue the historical development of the Unit through particularly ways of innovating within natural history film-making.

The first problem emerges over how to keep ideas flowing as people feel increasingly under threat. With more people on short-term contracts, who will perhaps move more quickly through the Natural History Unit and independent companies, ideas become more important to individuals competing to progress their own careers, rather than investment in the organisation. If the social contract between individuals and the institution becomes more superficial and less binding in terms of the employers obligations to the employee, why should the employee give up freely the symbolic commodity that has the most value: the next good idea? There researchers suggested that ideas for innovative programmes are becoming closely guarded secrets, at precisely the time the Unit needs to draw upon all its resources. As Susie explains, that rather than being shared:

"I think ideas just get kept very close secrets. And you know, they are like gold dust. I think people write them secretly you know in the dead of night they come back to the office and type up their idea" (Susie, interview 19.7.95).

The second point emerges within the process of generating ideas and getting on in the industry. Individuals talked about having to 'sell' their ideas to the head of the Unit41_{, or having to}

prostitute themselves42_{, couching their involvement in the Editorial processes in economic}

terms. They suggested moreover that the basis of selling ideas involved making claims about how audience would react to the film, in ways which resonated with the experiences and expectations of the Unit managers. As Ben suggests: "you sell it on the grounds that you are going to see absolutely gob-smacking images of the sort that you have never seen before. And the public are going to mad over it" (Ben, interview 14.7.95).

The audience therefore emerges as a key point of negotiation in the commissioning of new ideas, as well as the assessment of past programmes. The inability of the Natural History Unit to predict the audience prior to commissioning means that Alastair Fothergill and the Channel Controllers will take risks on those individuals who are best able to claim to represent the audiences, particularly those that best correspond with their ideas of audience expectations match innovations of the past like developments of technology and improvements in picture quality. The audience proves to be the weakest point in the network because of the fundamental inability of any television programme to predict its audience response, prior to transmission. Rather than being translated into networks and made predictable, audiences cannot be 'captured' or 'controlled'. Ang (1991) suggests that this means that:

"A constant sense of uncertainty thus haunts television's persistence and continuity as an institution. The audience,sine qua nonof both television's economic viability and cultural legitimacy forms its ultimate insecurity factor because in principle there is no way to know in advance whether the audience will tune in and stay tuned. [...] How to get an audience is the institution's key predicament, even though this is not always acknowledged as such" (Ang, 1991: 18).

Official audience measures can be used in different ways to support existing programme- making strands. For example, the most important measure of success for the blockbuster series may not, in fact, be its immediate audience figures, so long as it has a high audience appreciation index. The Private Life of Plants, for example, did not achieve audience figures as high as was perhaps expected with 7 million viewers. However, it achieved an audience appreciation indices of 93 out of 100, which was a record for the Unit43_{. Similarly, the}

educational value of the Wildlife Special is perhaps secondary to its popular appeal, and the ability of these programmes to achieve huge ratings both in Britain and overseas. The special on the Great White Shark shown in Easter 1995, gained a share of 43%, with an audience of 8.8 million, and was also spectacularly successful in the States, even though the market for wildlife

41_{"It doesn't matter what ideas you have, you have to sell them through Head of the Unit" (Anthony,} interview 3.8.95)

42_{"We researchers say it is like prostituting yourself" (Nic, interview 14.7.95)} 43_{These figures arrived in the library when I was working in the Unit.}

films had fallen44_{. The amount of subsequent overseas sales may even be sufficient to turn a}

failure into a success:

"The thing that I have got in my mind isNatural Neighbours, which I believe didn't do that well ratings wise. I think immediately afterwards it was probably looking like they weren't going to get another series, but then they managed to sell it well overseas, which means that it costs the controllers less money, then maybe it is worth while doing it. So that is another influence on whether programmes are made or not" (Adrian, interview 26.7.95).

The success of a programme about British wildlife may again be evaluated on a different basis, depending upon the trajectory of the figures. If the programme gains viewers during the series run, then the growing familiarity of the strand and its spread by word of mouth is taken as a measure of success45_.

The problems of evaluating the future success of any programme is, however, even more problematic. As television producer Silvey's comments demonstrate, it is extremely difficult to investigate.

"We were sometimes chided for attaching so much importance to knowing what peoplehad