Project networks and changing industry practices — collaborative content production in the German Television industry

Abstract

Changing industry practices and forms of production organization are the medium and result of co-evolutionary processes of change. The disruptive event of transforming the German TV industry into a dual system triggered a change in content production from in-house to collaborative forms in project networks which are not only highly sensitive to previous and anticipated project practices, but also to industry practices. In turn, the change in the production organization recursively influences the reproduction of industry practices. The co-evolutionary analysis is based on structuration theory.

Descriptors: organizational fields, networks, relations, evolution, structuration theory, project management

Introduction

'Content is king', is a well-known saying in the dramatically changing television industry. One aspect of change is the increasingly global character of this industry, another is the digitalization of its technologies, a third is the privatization of broadcasting in many European countries. The ongoing globalization of the TV industry can best be observed in numerous cross-border mergers, acquisitions and alliances which affect financing, production and distribution, as well as many cultural and production-related aspects, such as programme formating. In fact, most media groups now act as multinational enterprises and control not only the distribution, but also large parts of the content production on a global scale. The digitalization of this industry is symbolized by the adoption of digital technologies for production (AVAD, digital camera) as well as for distribution (DVB, Internet). Both content production and its distribution seem to be more or less equally affected by this development. The ongoing priv atization is a third aspect of the changing TV industry, at least in Europe, where public broadcasters now face severe competition from private channels. Privatization drives the TV landscape in several European countries, among them Germany, towards a 'dual system', i.e. an industry which comprises both powerful public and private broadcasters that compete on the demand side for viewers and advertisers, and on the supply side for terrestrial, cable and satellite channels, and -- last but not at all least -- for content. Given the dramatic increase in the number of TV channels, which is not only a medium but also a result of the globalization, digitalization and privatization of this industry, content will not only remain king but will, most likely, become an even more critical resource for success in economic (and, perhaps, cultural) terms. Producers, in turn, have to be able to produce content that has to be either entertaining or informative (or both), original, innovative, striking and, not least importan tly, to be delivered on time. For quite some time now, content for TV has been produced in projects, under the auspices of producers, by more or less independent authors, directors, actors, cameramen, special effects experts, casting agencies, actors, composers, script consultants, cutters, location scouts, stage designers, grips, etc. Such flexible project-oriented arrangements, which we refer to as project networks, enable producers to deal with the permanently changing demands of broadcasters and stations. At the same time, they provide the necessary social (networked) context which supports project coordination and contributes to successful completion of the projects.

This paper tries to explain how this network form of collaborative content production has evolved in the German TV industry. In some respects, the development of TV in Germany has followed the same evolutionary path as that of the U.S. film industry, where the network form of production emerged from the disaggregation of the Hollywood studio system (Storper and Christopherson 1987; Storper 1989; Robins 1993). Rather then just trying to reconstruct the emergence of network organizations in this industry, the main focus of the present inquiry is on how the evolution of this organizational form is related to the change in practices of the TV industry. The relatedness of network and industry practices is not only relevant to the emergence of this (then) new organizational form, but also to its present functioning. Looking at how changing structures and practices within an industry influence coordination in project networks, and how this form of coordination, in turn, influences the development of industry structu res and practices means that we are studying the co-evolution of industry and organizational form (McKelvey 1997; Lewin and Koza 1998). The German TV industry is particularly well-suited to such a co-evolutionary analysis since it has been hit by several 'disruptive events' (Hoffmann 1999), such as the move towards the dual system. It is events such as these, that make it possible for this topic to be studied.

The empirical data for this analysis were collected between 1998 and 2000 in semi-structured interviews with mainly producers and managing directors of 16 major production firms, and with programme editors and executives of the four broadcasting stations situated in the two main 'media' regions of Germany -- Berlin and Cologne. (1) Additionally, providers of artistic and technical media services, funding and development agencies, and other experts contributing to the industry were interviewed. These latter interviews enabled us to cross-check most findings. In total, about 70 interviews were conducted, each taking an average of 2.5 hours, focusing mainly on the organization of projects, the integration of the customer (i.e. the broadcaster) and the - in part joint - efforts to coordinate and control the production process (Windeler et al. 2000). However, the interviews also revealed, on the one hand, the interrelationships of structures within the industry and these efforts at coordination and control, on the other. Despite this empirical background, the emphasis of this paper lies on the conceptual level. To understand the constitution of the industry, we emphasize that it should be viewed as a multi-level process based on the recursive interplay of industry processes with practices of production organization.