Abstract
This book presents the findings from a research project, funded by the British Economic and Social Research Council. The project was conducted in the period April 2017–October 2020 with the aim to ‘investigate the implications of recent restructurings in ownership that have swept across the UK and international television production industry’ (p. v). It focused on a sample of UK-based television production companies as case studies. The research team analysed two original quantitative datasets – one examining the business performance of their selected sample based on financial data and the other one analysing the content produced by them from 2007 until 2017. In addition to that, they conducted 50 interviews with corporate financiers specialising in takeovers in the television industry, key policy-makers and senior executives at production companies and at their parent companies. The book is split into introduction, six substantive chapters and conclusion. Chapter 2 is devoted to international trends. Chapter 3, ‘From Minnows to Sharks’, includes a historical overview. Chapter 4 then delves into the issue of business performance and the advantages of takeover, while Chapter 5 is devoted to the implications of scale in relation to independence and economic sustainability. The final two substantive chapters then include the content analysis. All in all, this is a very thorough book, which is an excellent example of a well-designed academic study and as such should be of interest to media studies and media industries’ scholars and students even if they do not focus on TV production themselves.