2012 | 2 | Europe on and Behind the Screens

This second issue of VIEW enables a discussion of European television through different themes, approaches and case studies. The Discovery articles zoom in on case studies from different corners of Europe, while the Explorations offer different approaches to writing Europe’s television history and advancing theoretical discussions in the field.

Now showing 1 - 13 of 13

Comunicar Europa/Communicating Europe: Spain, Television Co-productions and the Case of Pepe Carvalho
Palacio, Manuel; Cascajosa, Concepción (2012-11-29)
This article will look into the case of a European television co-production: Pepe Carvalho (1999), a Spanish-Italian-French series based on the adventures of private detective created by writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Taking account of production and reception issues, it will address the complexities of using media in the process of European construction. The main objective of this text is to observe the manner in which cinema and television are interwoven into the collection of actions that are working towards the idea of Europe as a community, looking into processes that give meaning to the collective transmission of European values. The article will focus specifically on the way in which critics and media scholars collaborate as spurs or brakes in the processes of ‘comunicar Europa’ / ‘communicating Europe’.
Editorial
Mustata, Dana (2012-11-29)
Doing European television history is as much a theoretical and methodological challenge as it is a practical one. This novice field of study requires first and foremost answers to a few fundamental questions:• How do we define European television?• What tools do we employ to engage in television research that goes beyond or against national borders of television in Europe?• How do we integrate Europe in a field of research that has been predominantly Western?
From European Identity and Media Imperialism to Public Diplomacy: The Changing Rationale Behind Euronews
Polonska-Kimunguyi, Eva; Kimunguyi, Patrick (2012-11-29)
Euronews can be regarded as Europe’s most experimental and successful pan-national broadcaster. It is increasingly international in its organisation and output. The issues covered no longer concentrate on Europe. ‘Going global’ is the channel’s new motto.This paper outlines the changing rationale behind the creation of Euronews. It starts by discussing the American cultural imperialism of the 1970s and 1980s and the way it ignited European responses and counter-measures. It subsequently examines the politics of pan-national identity building in Europe and media’s role in the process. Finally, it demonstrates how Euronews has transformed itself into an instrument of the European Union’s transnational public diplomacy.
Hello, Lenin? Nostalgia on Post-Soviet Television in Russia and Ukraine
Khinkulova, Kateryna (2012-11-29)
After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Soviet television looked old-fashioned and seemed redundant, with the emerging post-Soviet televisual cultures turning their gazes to global sources of inspiration. The next decade affected Russia and Ukraine in very different ways. In Russia brief exposure to what was seen as “cheap mass-culture” left TV viewers and producers disillusioned. With the change of attitude towards Western TV, the ideas about Soviet TV changed, too. From a grey and unexciting model Soviet TV had become a shining example of “high quality” and nostalgia-driven content set in for the next few years. In Ukraine, where no domestic TV had existed as such prior to 1991 and where Soviet TV was rapidly fading into the past (and some-one else’s past, too), a decade of experimenting with programming had left the TV producers much more open to global television formats and Western ideas, developing programmes very different than the Russian ones.
Live From Moscow: The Celebration of Yuri Gagarin and Transnational Television in Europe
Lundgren, Lars (2012-11-29)
On April 14th, 1961, television viewers across Europe watched live images of Yuri Gagarin being celebrated on the Red Square in Moscow. The broadcast was made possible by the linking of the Intervision and Eurovision television networks, which was the result of cooperation between broadcasters on both sides of the Iron Curtain. By looking into how the co-operation between the OIRT and EBU was gradually developed between 1957 and 1961 this article engages with the interplay between cultural, legal and technological aspects of broadcasting and how the transnational broadcast of Gagarin’s return to Moscow was made possible. The article furthermore argues the need to understand early television in Europe as a dialectic between the national and the transnational and shows how the live transmission network binding the East and West together was the result of an interplay between structures provided by transnational organisations such as the OIRT and EBU, and initiatives by national broadcasting organisations.
Mapping Europe: Images of Europe in the Eurovision Song Contest
Pajala, Mari (2012-11-29)
The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) offers a unique viewpoint to the ways Europe has been imagined on television from the 1950s to the present. This paper looks at the use of a key visual symbol for Europe, the European map, to outline the history of the ESC’s representation of Europe. Whilst the European map was rarely used during the first decades of the ESC, it became a central visual element of the show in the 1990s, a period of great political change in Europe. Since then, the ESC maps have pictured an ever widening image of Europe, gradually moving towards a dynamic, moving image of Europe and finally, dispensing with a coherent map of Europe altogether.
Poland’s Return to Europe: Polish Terrestrial Broadcasters and TV Fictiont
Szostak, Sylwia (2012-11-29)
The changing political sphere in 1989 and the subsequent 2004 European Union accession had a profound impact on Poland’s economic, political and social spheres. Both events are considered to have marked Poland’s ‘return to Europe’ and strengthened the relations with its Western neighbours. This article examines the changing patterns of television fiction programming flow in Poland in the post-Soviet era, exploring the impact of those two events on Poland’s audiovisual sector. This article therefore assesses whether, and if so – how, this metaphorical ‘return to Europe’ is manifested on Polish television screens.
Reading Between the Lines: A Transnational History of the Franco-British ‘Entente Cordiale’ in Post-War Television
Fickers, Andreas; O'Dwyer, Andy (2012-11-29)
In 1950 and 1952, the British Broadcast Corporation (BBC) and Radio Télévision Française (RTF) realized the first transnational television transmissions ever. The so called ‘Calais Experiment’ (1950) and the ‘Paris Week’ (1952) were celebrated as historic landmarks in European television and celebrated as a new ‘entente cordiale’ between the two countries. This article aims at highlighting some of the tensions that surrounded the realization of these first experiments in transnational television by embedding the historic events into the broader context of television development in Europe and by emphasizing the hidden techno-political interests at stake. In line with current trends in transnational and European television historiography, the article analyses transnational media events as performances that highlight the complex interplay of the technical, institutional and symbolic dimension of television as a transnational infrastructure.
Spain was not Living a Celebration: TVE and the Eurovision Song Contest During the Years of Franco’s Dictatorship
Gutiérrez Lozano, Juan Francisco (2012-11-29)
Franco’s Dictatorship (1939-1975) used Spanish Television (TVE) as a key element in the political propaganda of its apparent ‘openness’ during the 1960s. The propaganda co-existed with political interest in showing the technological development of the media and the international co-operation established with other European broadcasters, mainly in the EBU. In a country ruled by strong political censorship, the Eurovision Song Contest was used as a political tool to show the most amiable image of the non-democratic regime. Spain’s only two Eurovision wins (1968 and 1969) are still, 50 years on, two of the building blocks of the history of TVE and of televised entertainment and popular memory in Spain.
Tele-clubs and European Television History Beyond the Screen
Wagman, Ira (2012-11-29)
This essay looks into the intellectual life of télé-clubs, the collective television watching experiment prominent in France in the 1950s, and its role in television studies. The article explores different directions by analyzing télé-clubs as a moment in television history itself and based on that, searching for a new method of studying television history. The article will examine the place of télé-clubs in European television history in two ways. Firstly, the article will look into how two recent conceptual developments that see media forms as transnational and remedial are useful for addressing some aspects of télé-clubs that have not received much treatment. Secondly, the article will consider where the first piece of intellectual work on télé-clubs – the report on the télé-clubs themselves by Joffre Dumazedier (1956) – might be located in the history of television studies in relation to other developments occurring in the 1950s. The article will plead in favour of the need to think of the instrumental uses of television in the period before its expansion and eventual domestication.
The Golden Stag Festival in Ceausescu’s Romania (1968-1971)
Matei, Alexandru (2012-11-29)
After his appointment as leader of the Romanian Communist Party in 1965, Ceausescu was very interested in gathering popular support for his economic plans. It was in this context that Romanian television could contribute for a short while to a liberalization of Romanian mass culture by means of cultural and entertainment programmes. Between 1968 and 1972, Romanian television (TVR) organized the international pop music festival ‘Cerbul de Aur’ (the Golden Stag), which brought together some of the best European singers at the time.
Transnational Relations between the BBC and the WDR (1960-1969): The Central Roles of Hugh Greene and Klaus Von Bismarck
Potschka, Christian (2012-11-29)
This paper addresses the relationship between the BBC Director-General Hugh Carleton Greene and the director of the West German Broadcasting Corporation (WDR) Klaus von Bismarck between 1960 and 1969. The thrust of the article is to point out the great potential of evaluating interpersonal relationships and their contribution to European perspectives on television history. The research is situated within transnational television historiography and it argues that the relationship between the two key personalities is manifested in multiple interdependencies, exchanges, visits and correspondences that exemplify the long-term British impact on the German broadcasting system as well as the bilateral cordial relations between the BBC and the WDR.
Zen and the Art of Adaptation: Jeremy Strong Interviews Producer Andy Harries
Strong, Jeremy (2012-11-29)
This article arises from a 2011 interview with producer Andy Harries. Earlier that year the BBC had aired three ninety-minute adaptations of the detective novels by Michael Dibdin featuring the character Aurelio Zen. The interview and subsequent article focus on the process by which the novels were chosen, the intended audience, casting, international co-financing, changes between page and screen, and the adaptations’ relationship to other texts - notably Wallander - also produced by Harries.

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