Understanding Screen Franchising

Abstract

Handbooks about the business practice of franchising do not seem to consider whether the practice occurs in television and other media industries. This lack of regard is replicated by media and communication scholars who fail to consider how this kind of media licensing works, even though the term franchising' is frequently adopted. To place the topic in a wider realm of critical inquiry, this article analyses a set of distinct economic, legal and cultural parameters that have to do with media intertext franchising on the one hand and television format franchising on the other. It finds that the two sets of practices operate under different regimes of legal protection, one concentrating on trade mark law and the other focusing on copyright law. In turn, this raises a question concerning the legal protectability of television program formats such as Ugly Betty under a legal shield associated with the media intertext rather than the television format. The presence of dramatic character would seem to be crucial to facilitating the building of a brand associated with a fictional character's aura or image.