Opening Note

This past year I have been fortunate enough to gain extensive access to two of News Corp.’s subsidiaries: the Fox Broadcasting Company (FBC) and the FX cable network. In June 2007, I spent two weeks observing all stages of regulation in the Standards and Practices (S & P) department at FBC. I viewed Standards "notes" and actions taking place at table reads of King of the Hill and Family Guy, rough cut viewings of American Dad and the pilot of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, run-throughs of The Lot, and live broadcasts of So You Think You Can Dance.

From August 2007 to the present day, I--together with my Arizona State University colleague Daniel Bernardi--have been embedded in the production of the seventh and final season of The Shield. We have observed story breakdown sessions, casting calls, studio and location shooting, marketing campaigns, and other elements of the creative process.

The first experience came with a caveat, though, that the other one did not: my signature on a non-disclosure agreement. Our investigation of The Shield will be published with University of California Press next year, excerpts I will share with the consortium in the coming months. However, my brief discussion here on FBC--the subject of this short piece--will be couched more in terms of methodology rather than specific production knowledge of the show for obvious reasons. All other material I have gathered likely will become that of legend.

My experience at FBC served to validate many of the models used by previous media industry researchers in understanding how the production process contributed to the meaning of texts and shaped the possibilities for audience readings. These included:

• John Tulloch’s and Manuel’s Alvarado’s book on Doctor Who (1983) which examines the series as an "unfolding" text that subtly shifts its ground in response to institutional, professional, public, cultural, and ideological forces;
• Tony Bennett’s and Janet Woollocott’s book on James Bond, Bond and Beyond (1987), and how the deliberations, calculations, and policies over the definition of the "Bondian" by EON Productions transformed ideologies into filmic form;
• Julia D’Acci’s book Defining Women on Cagney and Lacey (1994) which explores how the cultural "struggle over the meanings" of "woman," "women," and "femininity" played out across networks, artists, and audiences; and
• Elena Levine’s adoption of Richard Johnson’s "circuit of culture" model for her article on General Hospital (2001) that breaks down the distinction between production, texts, and audiences

John Caldwell maintains many of the very same arguments in his recently published book, Production Culture (2008), analyzing the entrenched interpretive frameworks and self-analysis that inform and govern production work worlds. Production cultures remain discrete acts rather than general conditions, and serve as constant sites of struggles between management and artists.

To properly study these practices Caldwell rightly calls for a cultural-industrial method of research that examines and integrates data from four modes of analysis: textual analysis of trade and worker artifacts, interviews with workers, ethnographic field work and observation of production spaces and professional gatherings, and economic/textual analysis. While media industry practices have invariably centered on the fourth mode, it has always been the three modes that have proven most difficult to scholars. The manner by which industry and academia interface and share resources has largely been one of contention and non-cooperation. The Convergence Culture Consortium has provided a solution to this gridlock by bringing together various entertainment companies, advertisers, and brands with researchers and thinkers.

However, the production cultures of various media entities still remain heavily guarded by their corporate gatekeepers. For example, little critical work has been done on the Standards and Practices area of the television business. Nevertheless, my observations of the managerial and creative aspects involved in the regulation of a Family Guy episode do indeed illustrate specific aesthetic and ideological norms that S & P executives at FBC use within their creative practices and decisionmaking process. It is this experience that has guided the method for The Shield, echoing past claims by others while hopefully also offering new models for critical industry studies.

First, a researcher needs to uncover and observe actual industry operations, finances, and practices in the first place to accurately and authoritatively identify the institutional and ideological norms of media production. Primary documentation and observation of the S and P process such as multiple script versions, various cuts, and libel concerns involving Family Guy reveal a more nuanced and complex role than has been traditionally understood. Second, without this information, one can not properly contextualize the event of interpretation or the process of negotiation by which S & P executives shape a text. With Family Guy, they sometimes incorrectly anticipated potential controversy of an episodes, requiring too many cuts or changes than was needed. Lastly, the representational norms that guide one network show only informs that series, not the entire programming schedule. S & P executives conceptualize viewers, advertisers, and the text differently for Family Guy than they do for American Idol.

What Family Guy demonstrated to me was that each television series presents a unique set of economic, political, and social variables that must be historicized and contextualized in order to fully understand how networks mediate, work over, and transform the potential meanings of their series. By teasing out these elements on a show-by-show/department-by-department basis within a given network, we will be better able to articulate a critical theory embedded within the everyday production culture of television.

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Closing Note

The first part of this piece appeared in the Closing Note of last week's C3 Weekly Update, focusing on Eleanor's thoughts on the concepts of spreadability and stickiness as it relates to her ideas about participation and interactivity. This week's piece looks at the implications of those reflections.

Returning to my research project, which I am presenting on at the C3 Spring Retreat and which will be available around the Consortium in the coming weeks, my review of the official movie websites revealed that few went beyond enabling people to watch a trailer, read about the cast, download a screensaver or wallpaper, and possibly look up showtimes - designed with an invitation to interact and . Moreover, there didn’t seem to be any relationship of participatory elements on the official website to revenue. The site that I would characterize as the most participatory was for Knocked Up, which came in 9th out of the ten films in the sample. The sites for Spiderman 3, Shrek 3 and The Simpsons, - ranking #1, 2, and 8, respectively in terms of box office - were somewhere in the middle of the field. Sites for every other film in the list were quite strictly interactive and sticky.

So what does all of this mean for a brand’s marketing campaign?

Implications: Balancing Stickiness and Spreadability across the Web

There is no cookie cutter, standard issue solution for brands, and strategy depends heavily on the company’s goals for a marketing and promotional campaign. Based on the research I’ve done with C3, here are some factors that may be important to consider in designing an online strategy that leverages the sticky and the spreadable.

• Online, it’s important to know the guest list and the invitation. This may seem obvious, but it was very unclear to me, looking at the movie site sample, what the studios’ invitation really was, whether the site was primarily interactive or if it incorporated participatory elements. Of course studios want people to see the movie, but why is there a website? Is it just a way to access promotional information? Was it intended to change minds? Facilitate discussion? Spur DVD sales later? Television, where much of a film’s advertising budget goes, has much greater reach, but it is also much more passive. Using the website to offer both information and entertainment leverages the best elements of the web and enables consumers to self-select.
• Look beyond the microsite. The web is becoming more and more about aggregation and consumers deciding what they want to see and when - trying to push them to a microsite is probably not the most productive way to engage them, or the most productive goal for a marketing campaign. Working through the places, like social networks, that people already go to for information, or partnering with other companies to increase and directly contact a targeted audience base are likely to become more and more common tactics. Audiences will take the content to other sites.
• Consumers should be invited to circulate promotional materials, easily. If people in the audience really want to circulate an ad or trailer, there are significant benefits to letting them do so freely throughout the web. Although it is more difficult to measure than reach and frequency in a traditional campaign, this strategy captures all of the benefits of WOM, at zero additional cost. Again, it may sound obvious, but it is surprising how many ads I have seen uploaded to YouTube that have garnered thousands of views, only to be pulled down. Making content easily accessible and spreadable will also help bring the audience to you.
• The participatory audience for your brand may be small, but powerful. Everyone I’ve talked to who is in the business of creating participatory campaigns for a product has acknowledged that the core audience tends to be small - for now. What these audiences can do, however, is generate interest from individuals and the press that in turn spreads the message to a much larger pool of potential customers. Reach and frequency are still good metrics, but not at every stage of the campaign.
• Goals and community are the foundations of sticky and spreadable. Popular sites are both information and entertainment, but they have another important shared characteristic: they are platforms for community and goals. For a brand, designing an online game is probably the most common and most restrictive type of application, but Nike’s branded utility to help runners track their progress and the campaign around the film Cloverfield that encouraged the audience to search for clues that surrounding the film are examples of very different initiatives that embrace goals and community that keep people coming back and recommending the site(s) to friends.

Perhaps the most important learning I have done in C3 is how difficult it is to unlearn marketing as a push tactic owned by a company to re-conceptualize it as a pull tactic and a partnership between companies and consumers. Stickiness is not about disruption and compelling the audience to look, but about making them want to come back to interact with a brand. Spreadability is not about just distribution, but about building and maintaining relationships between the company, its customers, and their networks. There are many virtual ballparks; it will be the fans and proselytizers of brands are what will invite new audiences in.