Business on Television: Continuity,Change,and Risk in the Development of Television’s “Business Entertainment Format”

Abstract

This article traces the evolution of what has become known as the business entertainment format on British television. Drawing on interviews with channel controllers, commissioners, and producers from across the BBC, Channel 4, and the independent sector, this research highlights a number of key individuals who have shaped the development of the business entertainment format and investigates some of the tensions that arise from combining entertainment values with more journalistic or educational approaches to factual television. While much work has looked at docusoaps and reality programming, this area of television output has remained largely unexamined by television scholars. The research argues that as the television industry has itself developed into a business, program makers have come to view themselves as (creative) entrepreneurs, thus raising the issue of whether the development off-screen of a more commercial, competitive, and entrepreneurial TV marketplace has affected the way the medium frames its on-screen engagement with business, entrepreneurship, risk, and wealth creation.