Television format as cultural technology transfer: importing a production format for daily drama

Abstract

Since the 1990s, TV formats have become an essential part of the global trade on television programmes. While many of the most popular television programmes today are format adaptations, theorisations on television formats have remained few. This article introduces production format as a specific type of television format. While television formats usually trade both programme content and a mode of production, production format solely contains information on how production can be best managed and organised. Production format can thus be studied as cultural technology transfer. A Finnish daily drama titled Salatut elämät serves as an example of importing and adapting a production format created by the Australian-based Grundy company. The article first presents some theorisations on television formats and reviews technology transfer theory, then tracing the origin of Grundy’s production format and analysing the acquisition and adaptation of the format in Finland. Finally, the production format is evaluated in both industrial and scholarly terms. By establishing a new concept for analysing television formats, the study will contribute to format studies and production studies.