2013 | 4 | Hidden Professions of Television

We know little about the ‘behind the scenes’ of television. While the booming field of production studies has been shining a light on the work processes and the personnel in production spaces, there is still a lot to be learnt about the ‘hidden’ professions of television. This issue of VIEW provides a rich but fairly eclectic series of contributions based on the theme. The articles presented here bring under scrutiny the ‘behind the scenes’ activities of television and their hidden, often unrecognised and uncelebrated personnel and processes. They engage across a wide range of organisational, administrative and technical activities that have played their understated, often ‘invisible’ part in the historical formation and development of television.
Just like in the previous issues, articles in this issue are divided across two separate sections: ‘Discoveries’ that zoom into the ‘behind the scenes’ of specific programmes and broadcasters and use innovative and original sources; and ‘Explorations’ that shine a light on different professions of television: from the continuity announcers, to the 1st AD, to the TV retailer or audience interpreters.
Co-edited by Andy O'Dwyer and Tim O'Sullivan

Browsing 2013 | 4 | Hidden Professions of Television by Subject "Casting"

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  • Article
    Writing Games: Continuity and Change in the Design and Development of Quiz Shows in Italy
    Fiacco, Axel; Scaglioni, Massimo (2013-12-23) , S. 112-123
    As in the United States and in many countries across Europe, the quiz show was a founding genre for Italian television as far back as the 1950s: because of their broad appeal, such game shows as Lascia o raddoppia and Il musichiere contributed strongly to television’s burgeoning popularity during the subsequent decades. Since then, the quiz show has traversed different eras of television history, with partial and gradual changes to its textual features, aesthetics and narratives, as well as its production routines. Since the 1980s, with deregulation and the advent of commercial television, the Italian game-show market has become more international and more reliant on formats. In the genre’s long history, the ‘hidden profession’ of writing TV games exhibits elements of both continuity and change. The needs of format-adaptation have highlighted two main areas of “localization”: question-writing and casting. This essay explores the profession of game-show writer in Italy and how the role has evolved. It adopts a historical framework to illuminate the continuity and change in the profession, in relation to a broader history of both the genre and the television medium, while also seeking to outline both the specificity of the Italian TV context and its connections with an international environment.