Television Producers

From live sports coverage to light entertainment, British television is producer-driven. Television Producers presents a comprehensive survey of the entire spectrum of television broadcasting, conveying a vivid sense of the particular atmosphere of seven different programming areas - documentaries, news, sport, infotainment', drama, comedy and game shows. Jeremy Tunstall's focus is on the main concerns of the producers, including money, the type of performers available, the facts of studio, location and film, and the kinds of expectations which each particular is expected to fulfil. He argues that these constraints and opportunities attract and continue to influence different kinds of people, so that documentary producers see themselves as artist-filmmakers, while news or game-show producers perceive their roles very differently. Each batch of producers are walled off into a separate, private world with its own guiding assumptions, paradoxes, eccentricities and fears, and it is these worlds which Tunstall illuminates. Television Producers provides an in-depth look at the work of individual producers including the TopPeople' in British broadcasting - producers of leading programmes and the network barons. Over two hundred and fifty producers across the range of British television - BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and the independents - were interviewed for the book, along with the Hollywood executive producers of Dallas, Kojak, Mash and CHIPS . The final chapter considers the possibilities for the future of broadcasting as it faces the twentieth century