This Is Also Television (scriptie totaal)

100 Pages·2012·2.74 MB·English

by  Rimme Mastebroek

This Is Also Television
Voetbal International as the Legitimation of
Television Quality

Name: Rimme Mastebroek
Address: Werner Helmichstraat 2B, 3553 JX Utrecht
E-mail: [email protected]
Student ID: 10267158
Professor: Carolyn J. Birdsall
Course: Master Thesis
University of Amsterdam
Content

Foreword
Abstract

1. Introduction 5

2. Historic Television Discourses and Developments
from the 1930s Onwards 14

3. Sports Broadcasting and Talk Shows 25

4. Results: Voetbal International versus Studio Voetbal 37
4.1. Policy and Self-Promotion 37
4.2. Core Principles: The Role of the Host 43
4.3. Core Principles: Setting 47
4.4. Audience, Participation and Styles of Speech 53
4.5. Voetbal International: A Mix of Genres and ‘Popular Television’ 59

5. Conclusion 66

6. Sources 70

7. Appendix (1): Voetbal International. RTL7. 16 January 2012 75

8. Appendix (2): Voetbal International. RTL 7. 23 April 2012. 79

9. Appendix (3): Voetbal International Oranje. RTL 7. 11 June 2010. 86

10. Appendix (4): Studio Voetbal. Nederland 1. 6 June 2010. 90

11. Appendix (5): Studio Voetbal. Nederland 1. 15 January 2012. 93

12. Appendix (6): Studio Voetbal. Nederland 1. 22 April 2012. 96

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Foreword

With suitable pride I present you my master thesis: “This Is Also
Television: Voetbal International as the Legitimation of Television
Quality”. This document forms the conclusion of my ‘University years’.
First, I earned my bachelor’s degree ‘Communication and Information
Studies’ at Utrecht University. After these three years, I decided to
switch to the University of Amsterdam, in retrospect a wise decision. I
really enjoyed my year in Amsterdam. The small scale and the personal
ettention of the professors – who actually seemed to care about their
students – were a huge relieve compared to Utrecht.

One of these professors is Carolyn Birdsall. Special thanks go to her, for
patiently guiding me through this thesis-process and giving me
numerous useful insights and suggestions. I would like to thank
professor Sebastian Scholz as well, since he managed to really enthuse
me about the current ‘quality television’ debate, which eventually led to
this thesis. And finally, very special thanks go to my parents, for offering
me their unconditional love and support and – not unimportant – paying
my tuition fees all these years!

Rimme Mastebroek

Utrecht, 20 June 2012

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Abstract

This article examines the contemporary ‘quality television’ debate, in
which the emphasis lies on drama and other genres are neglected. This
tendency is an unwelcome one and needs to be challenged, since a huge
majority of television programming is written off, in a desperate attempt
to present television as high culture. In response, this article will focus
on one the ‘forgotten’ genres: talk shows. An attempt will be made to
illustrate that the existing tensions between what is considered quality
television and popular genres could be reduced. Taking the award-
winning talk show Voetbal International and its competitor Studio Voetbal
as case studies, this article employs a combination of comparative,
genre and institutional analysis to illustrate how a popular talk show like
Voetbal International can function as a genre that indeed contains its own
specific quality and legitimates television. The conclusion of the article
outlines how the commercialised setting of the show, its tendency to mix
genres and borrow heavily from reality television, and its ability to
‘attach’ their viewers to the show via audience participation makes make
Voetbal International a good example of ‘popular television’ and a
candidate for bridging the gap, at least partially, between quality
television and reality television.

Keywords: talk shows, reality television, Voetbal International, quality
television, television legitimation.

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1. Introduction

Tonight, in the Amsterdam-based theatre Carré, the talk show
Voetbal International (RTL7) has won the highly desirable Gouden
Televizier-Ring. The other contestants for the prize awarded for
the 46th time, presented by three-time winner Mies Bouwman,
were The Voice of Holland and Wie is de Mol?. Voetbal International
received 37 percent of the votes.
Remarkably, the winning show itself had a live-broadcast from
another studio in Amsterdam. Therefore Derksen and Genee did
not have the opportunity to receive the prize themselves.
[…] Although Derksen personally dislikes the election by the
public, he reacted by saying it is amazing that a football show - on
a small broadcaster, and with fewer viewers than its competition -
had won the Gouden Televizier-Ring. Moreover, he could not resist
making fun of “all those know-it-alls” who earlier that day
predicted in the media that Voetbal International did not stand a
chance to win the award. Derksen: “We’ve outsmarted them.”
(“Voetbal International wins Gouden Televizier-Ring 2011”, 2011,
own translation)

Every year the Dutch Gouden Televizier-Ring Gala takes place. During this
event, organised by the long-established programme magazine
Televizier, the most important prizes for Dutch television programmes
are awarded. The public can vote and thereby decides which programme
will win the golden Ring and is thus the best television programme in
the Netherlands. In 2011, a talk show revolving around football, Voetbal
International, claimed the award, against all odds. The infamous Dutch
television expert Bert van der Veer was one of the many people who saw
the election of Voetbal International as highly surprising, perhaps even an
outrage:

According to television-expert Bert van der Veer it is disastrous
that Voetbal International has won the 46th edition of the Gouden
Televizier-Ring. In Shownieuws, Van der Veer feels VI winning the
award is not a welcome development for the stature of the award.
“It is not a disaster for the television world, but it is a disastrous
development for the Televizier-Ring. […] The award will become
worthless.” (“Winst VI desastreus voor Gouden Televizier-Ring”,
2011, own translation)

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What might be unpacked from the comments of Van der Veer? Two
aspects could be extracted from his comments that concern
contemporary debates within television studies, or, to be more exact,
within the quality television debate. Firstly, he makes a statement about
quality, in terms of the quality of Voetbal International. Perhaps implicit,
but Van der Veer clearly feels that other shows were more deserving of
the award. This personal judgement is, however, not that remarkable.
Statements about television quality are made all the time, and are,
according to Robin Nelson deeply woven into the fabric of everyday life
(58). But while such comments are a feature of everyday life,

academics sustain a sense that value judgments require some
measure of objectivity, and their awareness that personal feeling
and identity are in play is what makes them sometimes feel even
more uncomfortable. Television studies academics properly aim
to stand at a critical distance and to encourage students to
become aware of value-positions. (Nelson 58)

Secondly, Van der Veer claims that a talk show winning the award is
disastrous for the stature of the award – and therefore the reputation of
television as a medium as well. Talk shows, as it appears, cannot be
considered ‘quality’ programming. Although the first observation is not
an unimportant one and will certainly be discussed later on, this second
observation will be at the very center of this thesis.
In the quality television debate, which has been going on for
several decades now, serialised drama has always been at the core of
the discussion. In 1996 Robert Thompson laid the foundation for the
debate with his groundbreaking Television’s Second Golden Age. The first
‘Golden Age of Television’ stretched roughly from 1947 to 1960, “when
serious people could take television seriously” (11). The two genres held
responsible for the “Golden Age” label were the comedy-variety show
and the anthology drama. Both were based on theatre adaptations. In
the 1980s a new, more sophisticated and artistic, type of programming
emerged, leading to the recognition among television critics that the 80s

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might not to be the start of a new golden age, but at least the start of an
era of ‘quality television’ (12). The term ‘quality television’ was coined a
decade earlier, “but really caught on after the debut of Hill Street Blues in
1981” (12). The Viewers for Quality Television (VQT) - a non profit
organization whose aim was to protect series they considered to be
quality from cancellation due to low ratings - formulated one of the first
definitions:

A quality series enlightens, enriches, challenges, involves and
confronts. It dares to take risk, it’s honest and illuminating, it
appeals to the intellect and touches the emotions. It requires
concentration and attention and it provokes thought.
Characterization is explored. And usually a quality comedy will
touch the funny bone and the heart. (VQT, cited in Thompson 13)

Thompson’s critique of this definition was that is a hard one to apply
with a degree of objectivity. He therefore came up with his own list of
twelve characteristics of quality television (the next chapter will
elaborate further on this list). The problem of this list, however, is that
the twelve points are hardly applicable on anything other than serialised
drama. Because of this, from the very beginning onwards, the discourse
of ‘quality’ television could only incorporate drama. Without further
explanation, other genres were left out of the debate. This tendency has
been and still is characteristic for the quality television debate.
Quality television is closely interlinked with the attempts to
legitimize of television, Michael Newman and Elana Levine argue in their
book Legitimating Television. Media Convergence and Cultural Status
(2012). In their recent, but already influential work, Newman and Levine
offer an account that is foremost historical; it follows, describes and
analyses ideas about television from its origin until very recently: the
present era of convergence. The legitimation of television, they argue in
their book, depends on discussions on the relations between ‘classic’
discursive dichotomies, such as the passive viewer versus the active
user, high culture versus low culture and television as a feminine or

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masculine medium. Those discussions define to a significant extent the
cultural value of television and its place in cultural hierarchies. In order
to legitimate broadcast television, certain genres, such as reality
television, which is traditionally seen as lowbrow, are excluded from the
discussion (34). This legitimation of television is accomplished by trying
to ‘cinematize’ television – pushing television more towards cinema –
and distances it from other, more popular genres (4-5).
(Quality) drama series alone, it appears, could be deployed to
legitimate television. This development is an unwelcome one and needs
to be challenged since a huge majority of television programming is
written off, in a desperate attempt to present television as high culture.
In response, this thesis will focus on one the ‘forgotten’ genres: talk
shows. Talk shows are neglected (in the quality television debate) or are
not seen as television at all (in Newman and Levine’s account). As
shown above, these debates are intertwined and cannot be seen
separate from each other. However, the quality television debate should
be positioned as a part of the legitimating television debate, rather than
in opposition.
An attempt will here be made to illustrate that the existing
tensions between what is currently considered quality television and
popular genres, like talk shows and reality television, could be reduced.
I will argue that it is not (just) the ‘cinematized’ drama that can function
as quality and as a legitimation of the medium as a whole. Instead,
popular talk shows, where the emphasis lies on the ordinary, reality, and
authenticity, can function as a genre that indeed contains its own
specific quality and legitimates television, since television is traditionally
a popular (mass) medium. Voetbal International will function as the case
study to prove my points. Voetbal International, a talk show, has proven,
based on the Televizier-Ring, that the show contains quality, or at least
factors the audience enjoy, and indeed contributes to the Dutch
television landscape. Therefore, Voetbal International functions as a
useful example to reconsider the quality television debate.

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In the context of the existing literature, there are three main
aspects to motivate this research project. First, as mentioned before,
the quality television debate neglects most of the genres. Drama and
talk shows are in this current debate disconnected. I believe that this
tendency is undesirable and needs to be challenged. Second, many
scholars have found it difficult to analyse talk shows. Bernard Timberg
explains why this is the case in his acclaimed study on talk shows,
Television Talk: “talk shows vary so much from one another and at the
same time are so close to normal conversation” (2). In fact, important
literature concerning talk shows (e.g. Scannell 1991, Tolson 2001,
Timberg 2002) never mentions talk shows about sports, let alone about
football specifically. Thus another gap in the literature appears. And
third, in their introduction, Newman and Levine already outline possible
subjects for further research. One of them is researching how, within a
seemingly unlegitimated genre, some programmes receive a more
legitimate status than other, similar shows (12).
It is because of this last point the corpus will not only extend to
Voetbal International, but also its main competitor, Studio Voetbal (NOS,
Nederland 1). Voetbal International has a longer history than Studio
Voetbal and the success of the former made the NOS (Dutch Broadcast
Foundation) decide to create an equivalent. There has always been
competition between the two programmes, but this competition reached
its peak during the summer of 2010, when the football World
Championships were played in South Africa. A comparison between the
two shows will thus be at the core of my research. The corpus consists
of several broadcasts of both shows, starting in the summer of 2010 –
during the World Championships in South Africa - when the competition
between the two shows and their ratings reached their peak
(http://www.medianed.com/2010/06/28/vi-oranje-verdubbelt-
kijkcijfers/) until the end of 2011 when Voetbal International claimed
their award. A total of six episodes – three episodes of each show – will
be analysed. Relevant information of the six episodes – such as the

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present guests, the mise-en-scene and transcripts of notable quotes and
discussions – is processed into a so-called ‘segment sheet’. Each
segment sheet forms a separate appendix.
The method of analysis will, for a significant part, be a
Comparative Analysis, since two different types of texts – Studio Voetbal
(A) and Voetbal International (B) – will be compared. The ‘classic’
compare-and-contrast mode of Comparative Analysis will be used; in
this mode A and B are weight equally. Kerry Walker writes on the
website of Harvard University: “To write a good compare-and-contrast
paper, you must take your raw data - the similarities and differences
you've observed - and make them cohere into a meaningful argument”
(Walker 1998). This requires five elements: frame of reference, grounds
for comparison, thesis, organizational scheme and the linking of A and
B, in this case Voetbal International and Studio Voetbal.
The frame of reference is the context in which both shows are
placed, or, in other words, the umbrella under which the shows are
grouped. The frame of reference “may consist of an idea, theme,
question, problem, or theory; a group of similar things from which you
extract two for special attention; biographical or historical information”
(Walker 1998). In this case the larger framework is the aforementioned
debate concerning quality television and the legitimation of television.
The grounds for comparison will show the reader why the
comparison relevant. I want to study the differences and comparisons
between Voetbal International and Studio Voetbal because I want to find
out why Voetbal International is more popular so that the call by Newman
and Levine – to focus on the differences of legitimation between
programs of the same genre – can be answered. In this way, another
method of analysis will also play its part: genre analysis. Jane Stokes, in
her work on how to analyse media texts, suggests to find texts
establishing the conventions and principles of a genre, so that the
following question can be answered: “how far does a particular text
conform to a genre?” (85). This approach derives from film studies,

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