3.1 The Project Network and Screen Idea Work Group in Television Series Production

“We had a whole pile of commissioning editors, co-financers and partners”. So says director and writer Achim von Borries about developing Babylon Berlin (ARD/Sky Deutschland, 2017–). As early as the script review stage, almost 20 people, mostly men, are said to have taken part, with representatives from X Filme Creative Pool (the production company), Beta Film (the transnational co-financier) and the show’s two broadcasters: the pay TV operator Sky Deutschland and the public-service broadcasting network ARD. The latter participated through ARD’s biggest regional broadcaster, WDR—Westdeutscher Rundfunk (West German Broadcasting Cologne), and the commercial ARD subsidiary Degeto. But it is not just in such an exceptional cooperative scenario—which constituted a significant departure from Germany’s traditional structures for funding and developing fiction productions—that very different institutions, departments and people co-contribute to the writing and producing of TV dramas. To frame these negotiations around development and production, as well as to systemise the study’s methodology, I use two, rather concrete network concepts centred on human actors and the media industry: the “project network” (Sydow and Windeler 2001) and the “screen idea work group” (Macdonald 2010). Both models reveal the collaborative character of development and production processes, which have been emphasised by various authors from media industry and production studies (e.g. Havens and Lotz 2012) as well as from screenwriting research (e.g. Macdonald 2004, 90). “Culture is produced through sustained collective activity”, argue Richard A. Peterson and N. Anand (2004, 317), while John Thornton Caldwell (2013, 40) attests that media industries consist of series of networks assembled loosely enough to adapt to changing labour markets, new (digital) technologies and the whims of consumers. Here, Caldwell simultaneously addresses the flexible arrangement that characterises both the project network and the related screen idea work group.

3.1.1 The Project Network

The “project network” is decidedly about temporary business relationships and interactions related to individual projects (Sydow and Windeler 2001). Arnold Windeler, Anja Lutz and Carsten Wirth identified the project network as a fundamental tendency in television series production in Germany as early as the beginning of the 2000s, despite the industry’s heterogeneous organisational forms. They explain the term “project network” as follows:

The actors involved in producing television series coordinate their inter-enterprise cooperation in the form of a network. Because of the project- and at the same time network-shaped character of the cooperation, it is a special type of enterprise network: the project network. (2001, 94, my translation)

According to them, this project network consists of broadcasters, producers, writers and directors as well as service providers for both artistic (e.g. camera operators) and technical aspects (e.g. studio technicians; see Fig. 3.1).

Fig. 3.1
A diagram presents broadcaster, writer, director, provider of creative media services, and provider of technical media services all connect to producer.

A project network (my illustration based on Windeler, Lutz and Wirth 2001, 95; Sydow and Windeler 2001, 1050)

Full size image

According to Jörg Sydow and Arnold Windeler (2004a, 47), the project network also includes the “periphery” of rather marginal actors, reminiscent of the English-language categorisation “below the line”, describing trades that are less associated with creative, artistic responsibilities than those that are “above the line”. Outsourcing productions to external companies—especially in the field of TV drama—and the resulting development towards project-based networks characterise television and media industries in multiple countries (see e.g. Lee 2018). In West Germany—at least since the 1980s, when advertising-financed private television was introduced—and still today in the Federal Republic of Germany it is common practice to commission production companies and freelancers for single projects (see e.g. Meier-Beer 1995, 58). Alongside the nature of the particular TV show being worked on, practices and relationships from previous projects also play an important role today (Fröhlich 2007, 41). Freelancers in particular pursue “portfolio careers” (McRobbie 2006, 111) and depend on successful projects in order to obtain new contracts. In the case of TV series, expectations linked to the further development of the project can arise through seriality, if the production of further episodes, seasons or even spin-offs is planned or hoped for. Against this background, we can discuss seriality not only at the narrative level (as in many textual analyses) but also in terms of project networks in the production process. Windeler, Lutz and Wirth (2001, 94) describe a fundamental interplay of project-related and cross-project coordination. The two sides sometimes form a field of tension in the discourse on German quality TV drama and its production modes.1

The project network is organised flexibly, although it tends to connect to earlier practices and networks in practitioner selection (Eigler and Azarpour 2020, 2–3). According to Mark Deuze and Mirjam Prenger (2019, 20), flexibility generally represents a “key governing principle in media work”. Flexibility also characterises work under the “creativity dispositif” which Andreas Reckwitz (2017, 9) ascribes to contemporary (Western) society and which is also shaping the current transformation of Germany’s television industry. This pliable character is often seen as conducive to innovation, among other things, on the basis of the flexible specialisation model, which describes a fluid form of economy that is characteristic of the present (e.g. Starkey and Barnatt 1997). Windeler, Lutz and Wirth (2001, 95) correspondingly argue that the form of the project network allows for much needed innovation in the field of fictional series through regularly changing cooperation partners. Paul Dwyer (2019, 355–56), on the other hand, objects that the data proves that formerly secure employment has been converted into more precarious freelance employment while hardly evidencing the innovation that this scenario supposedly produces. “[P]recarity of employment in the sector is driven not by the need for flexibility and innovation but by shareholder interests in reducing labour costs and increasing profitability” (357), he notes in relation to the profitable UK production companies often embedded in global entertainment conglomerates.

Various studies have found that temporary, project-based work leads to precarisation (e.g. Gill 2011, 252–59). Discontinuous and hybrid employment relationships—as Andrea Bührmann et al. (2013, 33) have identified for, for example, film and television performers in Germany—affect freelance workers in particular. According to Jörg Langer’s (2015, 43) study on the situation of film and television professionals in Germany, freelancers are worse-off in terms of income, working hours and working conditions compared to permanent employees. In this respect, the project network can take on a hierarchical nature. In general, we can differentiate between free and fixed, or external and institutional, actors, and note that the latter generally have greater power over which projects are realised. Viewed via the principal agent theory (e.g. Pratt and Zeckhauser 1985), which originates in economics, Germany’s film industry contains an asymmetry of information and uncertainty between the commissioner (principal) and contractor (agent); that is, between the broadcaster or streaming service on the one hand and the production company on the other (Fröhlich 2007, 40). These different parties can, for example, have considerably different knowledge about a show’s success and its viewers and their activities.

The fact that agency is distributed differently is also supported by the more comprehensive non-human actor-network theory (e.g. Latour 1996), which scholars have adapted to television studies (e.g. Teurlings 2013), media industry and production studies (e.g. Caldwell 2013, 43) and screenwriting research (e.g. Grampp and Stiftinger 2022).2 The screen idea work group, which along with the project network is an important basis for the present work, also does not form a hierarchy-free space. According to this approach, every idea contributed during screenplay development is pressed into the official production hierarchy and production conventions (Macdonald 2010, 55).

3.1.2 The Screen Idea Work Group

Ian Macdonald (2010, 47) defines the “screen idea work group” as a flexibly arranged group organised around the development and production of a screen idea, which shows clear parallels to the project network. However, the focus here and in the related “screen idea system” (Redvall 2016) is more on individuals than on the project network, following the argument that the writing and production of television series begins with individuals and their screen idea (Redvall 2013, 29). This idea does not come from nowhere, just as creativity does not exist in a vacuum, Eva Novrup Redvall (2013, 29–30) argues. Philip Parker (1998) was first to lay out the concept of the “screen idea”, and other screenplay researchers have continued it, Macdonald in particular. According to Macdonald (2004, 90), the screen idea represents the core idea from which a “screen work” is to emerge, and thus it encompasses “any notion of potential screenwork held by one or more people. Whether it is possible to describe it on paper or by other means”. The screen idea work group, therefore, does not work with the screenplay alone but also contends with ideas about it in various ways, and the group can include very different actors, including, in principle, non-professionals (Macdonald 2010, 49–50). In Macdonald’s view, the conventional understanding of script development is that the “triangle” of writer, director and producer holds responsibility and these roles are clearly divided. But even in this traditional case, the screen idea work group changes in the course of the development process. In the case studies researched, this becomes clearly visible—for example, where the commissioner and the creatives involved changed from season to season. Macdonald distinguishes the screen idea work group according to two phases: first, there is the group as it exists before a production concretises; then there is the group as it deals with the practical application of the script, basing its decisions on feasibility. In this context, institutions and conventions play an important role and restrictions arise.

Redvall (2013, 31), in her related approach of the screen idea system, similarly differentiates between creative individuals and institutional gatekeepers with specific mandates and management approaches. She also highlights already existing television and film productions as another relevant force; these “trends, tastes and traditions” (31) help determine the genesis and further development of new projects.

3.1.3 Quality Attributions in the Project Network and the Screen Idea Work Group

The project network and the screen idea work group are both the subject and the context of the industry discourse on the German quality drama examined here. Besides the screen idea itself—the core of the plot, the “controlling idea” (McKee 2011, 130; see also McKee 1997) and the “unique selling point” (Eschke and Bohne 2010, 25) that screenwriting manuals call for—members of the temporary project network discuss what constitutes a good product, the costs framework, what makes a good producer and how to deal with dependencies like, for example, producers’ need for broadcasters. In connection with quality determinations in the project network, Windeler, Lutz and Wirth (2001, 103) address selection processes concerning not only the idea for a TV show but also the various actors and their composition: decisive for broadcasters is the extent to which production companies can assemble and manage a project network capable of production and that meets the broadcaster’s quality requirements. Production companies in turn place high importance on commissioners’ image or profile as well as their content orientation, according to Windeler et al. (2001, 108). Does the broadcaster match the company’s orientation? Furthermore, the quality and history of producers’ relationships with commissioners play an important role in selecting a partner. However, Windeler et al. (2001, 118) make clear for the German television industry (of the early 2000s) that few production companies can afford “the luxury of choice” (my translation). However, in view of the new commissioners, especially among streaming and pay TV services, selection possibilities have increased—as the look at Germany’s current television series landscape in Chapter 4 makes clear. The hierarchies of project networks and screen idea work groups are changing as a result, including being renegotiated as part of the discourse on quality drama.

The “project network” and the “screen idea work group” offer the central starting points to consider hierarchies and selection processes in this production study. Once again, the importance of quality attributions in television production and the connection with questions of selection and power are indicated. “[W]ho has the power to commission it, who has the money to make it?” is how Janet McCabe and Kim Akass (2007a, 6) describe the “politics of producing quality drama”. The analysed industry discourse on serial quality drama touches on not only aesthetic and narrative aspects but also questions of story development and production methods and selection. Both models also represent important touchpoints for the methodology and the interview sample, which the following subchapter outlines.

3.2 Methodological Approaches to the Industry Discourse

How can one undertake the analysis of Germany’s television drama production landscape, including screenwriting? Very divergent sources are available for such an endeavour. They often bear risks, however—one thinks, for example, of publications by associations and institutions that show a bias in favour of the industry or a specific professional or interest group. As Caldwell (2008, 35) diagnoses: “The industry now constantly speaks to itself about itself, sometimes in public. It also makes these dialogues and debates available in various multimedia formats”. In his monograph Production Culture, Caldwell proposes an “integrated cultural-industrial method of analysis” (2008, 4) that combines various methods, including interviews, ethnographic field observations of production spaces and professional meetings, and textual analyses of industry artefacts.

Caldwell differentiates the materials, or “deep texts” (2008, 347), that production research deals with primarily according to their degree of publicity. First, according to him, there are “fully embedded deep texts and rituals” (347) that are “largely cut off from the public” (346), such as internal pitch sessions. Second are “semiembedded deep texts and rituals” (347), which

also function as forms of symbolic communication between media professionals. Yet, these texts and rituals are simultaneously designed to spur and stimulate ancillary discussion and eventual awareness in the public sphere of the consumer as well. (346)

The third broad set of practices in Caldwell’s model is “publicly disclosed deep texts and rituals” that are “self-consciously directed at the viewing public”, including making-of documentaries (347). The boundaries between the three areas are fluid (346–49), especially because the public sources address not only potential audiences but also industry professionals. Thus, public and official practices and texts, such as news in trade magazines, also serve management purposes for the television industry itself.

In the analysed industry discourse on German quality drama, it becomes particularly clear that “publicly disclosed deep texts” also circulate transnationally. On several occasions, the observed and interviewed television professionals referred to making-of films or podcasts and the like when exploring quality TV and its modes of production in other projects and contexts. My study pays attention to the corresponding relevance of public representations in the industry and its analysed discourse by including trade magazines as one research object. I especially read and categorised articles on DWDL.de, the online media magazine central to the German television industry, to produce a first impression of the ongoing industry debates on writing and producing (German) TV series within the period under investigation (2015–23). I also considered further articles in other trade magazines and newspapers if they contained a clear reference to the researched industry discourse on German quality TV drama. At the same time, this study aims to look behind the official narratives of TV professionals on platforms such as DWDL.de. To these ends, I used two core methods of media industry and production studies: the expert interview with industry members and participant observation.

3.2.1 Expert Interviews

In addition to fundamental discussions on the expert interview in qualitative social sciences and media and communication studies research (e.g. Meuser and Nagel 1991), Hanne Bruun’s (2016, 131–43) reflections in “The Qualitative Interview in Media Production Studies” were particularly central to the study pursued. Media industry and production studies often use interviews; however, according to Bruun’s diagnosis, a lack of methodological reflection is usually evident. She names “exclusive informants” as a particularly relevant category and specific form of expert or elite interview. In interviews, experts from the media industries often do not speak on their comprehensive lifeworld and personal characteristics but rather primarily offer insights into the “inner workings of the media” (135). In addition to the goal of getting more information on the industry, Bruun focuses on the power relationship between interviewer and interviewee, which runs through various phases, from questions of access to publication processes. According to Bruun, researchers have access to the “public sphere” (139); therefore, their relationships with industry representatives are symmetrical and interviews between the two qualify as “meeting[s] between professionals” (142).

Bruun’s assessment approaches the concept of “studying sideways”, as described in anthropology as a counter-design to the “studying down” of less privileged people (e.g. Hannerz 1998). When studying sideways, researchers and their subjects come from the same milieu and have a comparable level of education and a similar habitus (Ortner 2010, 224). In my study’s specific case and its context of Germany, the interviewees and I belong to the academic and cosmopolitan “new middle class”, which Reckwitz (2020) regards as decisive for the late-modern, singularist lifestyle. This class in general underlies the “creativity dispositif” (Reckwitz 2017, 9) of our contemporary “Society of Singularities” (Reckwitz 2020), and we can safely say that my interviewees—practitioners of script development and TV professionals “above the line”—are decidedly involved with creativity. “People who work on the creative (as opposed to the technical) side of the film industry are in many ways not that different from ‘us’, that is, from highly educated academics, journalists, critics, and the like”, notes Sherry B. Ortner (2010, 227). Creative, dramaturgical and academic practitioners can, in principle, coincide to a certain extent, among other things through writing and conceptual work. For me personally, even more concrete interfaces to the interviewed television professionals arise because, like several of them, I am a film school graduate. Furthermore, as a part-time script editor, I regularly write expert opinions on screenplays, treatments and exposés and thus participate in screen idea work groups on the sidelines.

In view of my personal and societal position, it is fruitful to take up Bruun’s argument that a clear dichotomy between influential “human agents” and “powerless victims of structural forces within and outside the organisation” (2016, 136) should be avoided. She suggests focusing on the interaction between “powerful human agents and powerful structures”. Both aspects also play an important role in the industry discourse on German quality drama, since it revolves around individuals and their influence on project networks or screen idea work groups as well as institutional and structural restrictions.

In various ways, power relationships characterised the interview surveys themselves, as discussed by Bruun (2016). For example, in the final publication process, I submitted direct quotes to the interview partners for approval. In rare cases, they disagreed with quotations or had critical comments on them, which is why a small handful of statements could not be included in this book. Power relationships also became visible when some interviewees gave me access during very narrow time slots. Influenced by the interviewees themselves, the almost 40 interviews—the central basis of this book—are very heterogeneous. They differ significantly in terms of length (from about 45 minutes to almost two and a half hours) and location: I conduced the interviews in broadcasting stations, production offices, conference rooms and cafés as well as by telephone and video conference, and thus in different spatial and temporal contexts specified by the interviewees. In exceptional cases, more than one interview partner was present.

Comparability between the interviews is established by the central theme of quality TV drama in the context of Germany, as well as by the semi-structured interview guide I used for about 25 of the interviews, which I repeatedly refer to in the following chapters.3 Due to the relatively loose form of the interview, the “exclusive informants” (Bruun 2016, 131) were able to set topics themselves. For me, the interviewer, it in turn remained possible to ask questions and to engage with the language style of the interviewee (Meuser and Nagel 1991, 451).

A certain flexibility also proved useful in the face of the continuous changes in the television industry, which present a challenge for not only practitioners but also researchers (Gynnild 2016, 117). To keep up with developments, the semi-structured interview guide was slightly adapted again and again.

The concepts of the project network and the screen idea work group were decisive for choosing the sample of interviewees. Writers, producers, commissioning editors and directors—as classic official actors in screenwriting—were selected according to 13 case studies, each of which was a contemporary quality drama project from Germany.4 Further interviews took place with Liane Jessen, the former fiction head of ARD’s local broadcaster HR – Hessischer Rundfunk (Hessian Broadcasting),5 and managers of the visited and observed industry events and education programmes.

By primarily acquiring interviewees through specific drama productions, this study considers various participants of the same project and their interactions. Linked to the project-based and collaborative character of TV drama production, the importance of individual actors and personal relationships in the television industry is therefore taken into account.

3.2.2 Participant Observations

This study also uses participant observation, a central method from media ethnography (e.g. Boellstorff et al. 2012, 65–66). Industry workshops provided the central context, the observations of which are closely connected to the interviews: at these events, several of the series case studies were presented and negotiated as “best practice” examples, and many interviewees appeared as experts. The negotiation of individual projects accords with the project network, the organisational form that characterises the German TV industry. Participants and speakers at the workshops were also, at least implicitly, pursuing the goal of establishing contacts for future project networks. In this regard, Windeler, Lutz and Wirth (2001, 98) have already dealt with industry meetings and hold that they have a high significance for relationships and business among television producers. My participant observations at the industry workshops and the dovetailing interviews pick up on the networked character of the television industry as “oral and person-to-person-powered forms of approaches” (Bruun 2016, 141).

The industry events also promoted networking for me, the researcher, because they facilitated access to the “exclusive informants” (for example, by providing names, email addresses or agency information)—particularly important in an industry considered quite closed and therefore difficult to analyse, especially in Germany (Przybylski et al. 2016, 239). In general, the film and television industry tries to shield itself, even though it likes to propagate an idea of “greater industrial access” (Caldwell 2008, 339) to the outside world. Participation in these internal events made it possible to penetrate more deeply into the industry and its “deep texts and rituals” (Caldwell 2008, 347), whereas direct observation of production processes proved difficult. Still, the professional events I was able to attend pointed towards crucial and currently negotiated questions in the industry, and they furthermore informed me about practitioners’ discourse on quality TV drama, which continued in my research and manifested in this study.

During the research period of 2015–23, participant observations took place primarily at workshops on TV drama production at the Erich Pommer Institut (EPI) in Potsdam and Berlin. The EPI is an affiliate of the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Potsdam, and the University of Potsdam. It regularly organises further training for the industry. For my research, the annual Winterclass Serial Writing and Producing session was particularly instructive because of its focus on drama productions from Germany. To account for transnational—specifically transatlantic and trans-European—dimensions of the industry and their discourse on quality series, I also attended parts of the European TV Drama Series Lab. At this “high level training and think tank for leading professionals in the European television industry” (Erich Pommer Institut 2018), producers and commissioning editors from various European, especially Scandinavian, countries came together. Transnational and European dimensions were similarly evident at the Berlinale Series Market, a conference attended by a larger professional audience as part of the Berlin International Film Festival (Krauß 2020e; 2023e), which I attended in 2019, 2020 and 2023.

The rather extensive period chosen for the interviews and participant observations, from 2015 until 2023, is motivated by the goal of exploring transformations in the local television series landscape. The broad span also accommodates the significant time it takes for series projects to go from the development of screen ideas to production and distribution. Joachim Kosack, one of the managing directors of UFA production house, spoke of it in terms of “long-distance runs” at the Winterclass workshop (in Thielen and Kosack 2015).

The participant observations and interviews complemented each other not only through the intersections of people and case studies but also methodologically. At the industry events, the practitioners debated without any intervention or pre-structuring from me. This ensured that it was not I, the researcher, who constructed the industry discourse on German quality drama. While the professional events provided condensed insight into current industry debates, the interviews enabled follow up with and expanded detail from the individual interviewees.

3.2.3 Analysis and Interpretation

The analysis and interpretation of the interview transcriptions and field notes utilised the MAXQDA programme and followed the interpretative analysis strategy of Michael Meuser and Ulrike Nagel (1991, 452).6 The analysis led to a total of four main themes or categories, which I then incorporated into the structure of this study:

  1. 1.

    Industry and economy. This theme incorporates passages on the basic characteristics and structures of the TV (fiction) industry in Germany as well as questions of financing.

  2. 2.

    Quality drama and textual aspects. This aspect comprises collected notes and transcripts that foreground textual questions about and attributions to the content and form of TV dramas.

  3. 3.

    Production cultures and networks. This grouping describes how practitioners dealt with modes of script development and production and with the interplay of different production members, foremost writers, directors, producers and commissioning editors.

  4. 4.

    Distribution and reception. Under this theme, I group all notes and transcripts that focus on the programming and distribution of TV series as well as viewers’ preferences and reactions.

Some passages were also grouped under “Method and Subject”, where methodological limitations or problems became particularly visible; for example, when interview partners only gave information off the record. In this context especially but also for the entire evaluation at large, an understanding of the performativity and self-interest of media practitioners played an important role. What the industry reveals to academics should always be considered as coming from a performative point of view—as industry enactment—argues Caldwell (2013, 42). Especially at the workshops, “corporate ‘scripts’” and “trade stories” (Caldwell 2008, 3, 37–39) circulated. As Caldwell emphasises, such industry narratives are repeatedly recited, thus cementing themselves, and they often remain anecdotal while betraying clear vested interests. A comparison with industry publications and public interviews helped bring to light these official and learned accounts, which are not “wrong” per se but should be read critically. Such accounts generally link to the self-interests of the television professionals, as Caldwell makes clear with regard to expert interviews:

Interviews with and statements by producers and craftspeople in film can be conceptually rich, theoretically suggestive, and culturally revealing, yet we should never lose sight of the fact that such statements are almost always offered from some perspective of self-interest, promotion, and spin. (14)

Television professionals have their own agendas and often focus on “professional legitimacy and accumulation of career capital”, especially when making public and semi-public statements, as James Bennett (2016, 126) writes. In this respect, the project network and the screen idea work group again offer appropriate framings, as they point to the networked character of the industry: producers make statements about other people and institutions in the television industry against the backdrop of their existing or aspired relationships. The aforementioned hierarchies in project networks play an important role in this context, which the next subsection examines through the figure of the commissioning editor.

3.3 Commissioning Editors in Networks

3.3.1 Editors as Mediators

In the project network and the screen idea work group, commissioning editors play a special role in that they represent the wider interests of the broadcaster or the platform, and so they must keep in mind the project’s suitability for the entire programming environment. It is relevant here that editors, unlike freelance creatives, do not get hired for a single-specific project but usually are permanent employees who work for the broadcaster for several years or even decades (Schirmer 2013, 101). In the project network, they have to hold “the big view from the outside”, as Martina Zöllner (2018), from the ARD broadcaster RBB—Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (Berlin-Brandenburg Broadcasting), put it. To a certain extent, editors function as translators who mediate between the interests of the commissioning programme provider and the creatives as well as between artistic and economic goals (Conor 2014, 74). Hauke Bartel (2018), a lead fiction editor at the commercial broadcaster Vox at the time of the interview, emphasised the need to integrate “the perspective of a broadcaster, with the experience gained from programme planning, from linear broadcasting, from work processes”, into the screenwriting process. When it comes to larger projects, bigger broadcasters or extensive broadcasting networks, as well as diverse audience groups and different distribution models, editors’ external perspective can be highly diverse.

Commissioning editors are integrated into a complex, hierarchical network, which in the case of public broadcasters traditionally includes roles ranging from editorial heads and heads of divisions and departments, to programme and television directors, to intendants (so-called Intendanten) of the broadcaster (Noelle-Neumann, Schulz and Wilke 2000, 79). Within this network, editors must first represent and implement their projects (Kinghorst 2020, 49), and then they must cooperate with internal colleagues and departments for the following work phases. Against this background, the interviewed editors considered a cohesive voice towards writers, directors and producers on the part of the broadcaster to be a central objective and basis for developing a “common vision” (as highlighted by Johanna Kraus [2018], employed by the ARD broadcaster MDR). The idea of a singular or “one vision”, familiar from negotiations on the showrunner (see Redvall 2013, 102–30), also shone through in these self-reflections but, above all, became positioned as the responsibility of the network of editors.

In problem-oriented discussions on quality deficiencies and complex production conditions, practitioners questioned the extent to which a “singular vision” was possible given the multiple editors and parties who work within broadcasters and broadcasting groups. Such criticism must be seen in the light of public (and industry-specific) discussions on Redakteursfernsehen, or “editors’ television”.

3.3.2 Criticism of Editors

In debates on German quality TV dramas and their supposed short supply as well as their deficits, “Redakteursfernsehen” almost developed into an insult in the 2010s (see e.g. Zarges 2015d). The term became associated with a lack of artistic courage, bureaucratic public-service structures and processes that dilute and reduce the quality of script ideas (Gangloff 2016). Several interviewed and observed practitioners likewise reflected critically on commissioning editors and their involvement in the screenwriting process, by, for example, problematising their influence and abundance in complex project networks or pleading for production cultures that enable writers to act more autonomously. In particular, many television professionals saw the federalism of ARD as an obstacle. In the interplay of this consortium of Germany’s regional public-service broadcasters, a certain way of working seems to prevail, as described by Liane Jessen (2019), the former head of the fiction department at HR, a member of the ARD consortium, regarding centralised discussions under Gebhard Henke, the former coordinator of Tatort/Crime Scene (ARD et al. 1970–). Tatort is an ideal example here, since this popular crime procedural consists of different parts and episodes made by the various ARD members, which are shot and produced in their local contexts. According to Jessen, after the centralised Tatort meetings under Henke, all involved editors went to their respective regional broadcaster and did whatever they wanted. The scriptwriter Martin Behnke (2018) spoke of individual “kingdoms” less concerned with the quality of a project’s content and aesthetic than with “making their own editorial team and their own station look good”. However, smaller regional broadcasters in the ARD network can hardly manage to produce ambitious quality series on their own, and so different editorial departments and editors have to cooperate. Television professionals were critical of this situation because, in their view, processes become lengthy and difficult as a result of the many voices involved. If too many parties are participating, ideas quickly become watered down or lazy compromises are made, several practitioners claimed. In addition to divergent notes—that is, competing feedback—on the respective script versions, the practitioners negotiated programme selection criteria and the range of duties of the editor in this context.

Editorial responsibility and the creative development of content must not be delegated to third parties, Henke (2003, 133), a long-standing lead figure for fiction productions at WDR, the biggest ARD member, wrote at the beginning of the 2000s. However, many of the actors interviewed and observed clearly distinguished editorial work from artistic-creative work. Joachim Kosack (2019), managing director of the holding company of the UFA group (a leading production company in Germany belonging to the media conglomerate Bertelsmann) and former editorial director in the fiction department at the commercial broadcaster Sat.1, argued that editors should not see themselves as creative heads but rather should adopt a “somewhat more unemotional […], strategic and analytical view”. Several writers (e.g. in Hackfort et al. 2018) emphasised that “the story”, as the core area of the creative, falls primarily within their field of activity and that they possess the greatest competence here. The production-related discourse on German quality drama thus revolved, once again, around agency—but this time for both screenwriters and editors.

3.3.3 Editors’ Agency

Editors—and this was a recurring argument—have extensive power to act in the German television industry, and as a result they have a decisive influence on script development. Gunther Eschke (2015), a freelance dramaturge and formerly an editor at Sat.1, contrasted the current weight carried by the editor role with the showrunner model: “In public and private television, the editorial system would first have to change for a showrunner to make sense as part of the process. Because of course they have more creative power than an editor”, he contended. Such assessments have by no means arisen only since the more recent discussions on the showrunner and quality drama serial. In the past, many producers found their self-image contradicted when staff from the commissioning broadcaster made central decisions, instead of allowing the producer to decisively steer project networks and screen idea work groups. In her media economic analysis of the television landscape from the mid-2000s, Kerstin Fröhlich (2007, 45) already stated that producers described the existing institutional structure as outdated. In her view, this structure was shaped during the time of the public-service monopoly and hardly changed after the emergence of commercial broadcasters. At the same time, the producer Günter Rohrbach, former head of the Munich-based Bavaria Film, problematised among the public broadcasters a disempowerment of editors who promote and also enable more ambitious programmes. In the documentary Es werde Stadt!/It Will Be a City! (WDR et al. 2013–14), Rohrbach (in Graf and Farkas 2014, my translation) explains:

This loss of autonomy and also of competence simply leads to a loss of self-confidence. The commissioning editors, whose self-confidence is broken, have on the other hand the producers, […] to whom they give the commission, to whom they are in a certain way superior. […] [And the editors] have in turn also weakened the producer’s self-confidence. That is, one weakened position further weakens another.

Jessen (2019) expressed a similar opinion. While not including herself, she attested that public-service broadcasters’ staff were not so much “the Mick Jaggers etcetera” but instead “rather boring, stuffy people” who were looking for ratings and to meet the tastes of the editorial management. As for the producers from outsourced production companies, according to Jessen, they keep in mind the tastes of senior editors and their departments and, in order to play it safe economically, offer only “well-rounded products” and “no wild rock and roll stuff”.

However, the relationship between editors, outsourced producers and freelance writers remains in flux in the changed television series landscape, influenced by a situation of diversified providers, greater demand for drama productions and new working areas for commissioning editors.

3.3.4 Editors’ Changing Work in Project Networks

The editor’s profession has undergone repeated and considerable transformation. For example, in the 1980s, the role was reshaped by the introduction of advertising-financed broadcasters and the linked commercialisation of public-service broadcasting, through which specific distribution strategies and formulas emerged. In the course of formatting—the orientation towards certain TV formats with clearly defined components and rules, which practitioners have repeatedly problematised in German television fiction—a central component of the editor’s work has consisted of managing broadcast slots: tonalities and target groups of the respective programme windows are to be taken into account, and programming must be negotiated within the broadcasting network and with the offerings of the competition in mind. Bernhard Gleim (2016), who spent time as an editor at NDR, another member of the ARD consortium, suggested that consideration of the individual programme (such as a single TV film) gradually lost relevance compared to the overall programme. In this context, Gleim mentioned the flow of television, in the sense of Raymond Williams (1984, first 1975)—that is, the melting into each other of programmes in both the schedule and in reception among the audience—thus also seeming to belie a certain expertise in television studies. In view of the current decoupling from broadcast slots in the context of non-linear, internet-based distribution, however, the individual programme is gaining in importance again—especially in the area of the quality or high-end drama, which, as we know, should supposedly stand out from the “ordinary” programme.

Additionally, new and, in terms of staff numbers and organisational structure, smaller commissioners can bring about changes to the editorial work within project networks. One possible scenario is that production companies and writers could gain more freedom as well as responsibility. “There’s a big difference between working for a broadcaster that doesn’t actually have a fiction department” compared to “a channel where there is a head of department, two editorial directors, and 27 editors”, noted Jan Kromschröder (2018), a producer who has experience in the editor’s role from his time at the commercial broadcasters RTL and Sat.1, speaking in regard to Club der roten Bänder/Red Band Society (Vox, 2015–17). This adaptation of the Catalan youth medical drama Polseres vermelles (TV3, 2011–13) was the first drama “original” for the relatively small ad-funded broadcaster Vox, which beforehand relied solely on purchased US series. At Vox, Club der roten Bänder was initially supervised only by Bernd Reichart, then managing director. Many television drama practitioners tend to prefer such lean structures, as they believe these speed up and simplify processes. Pleas to de-bureaucratise the script process also proliferated in discussions on the Danish public broadcaster DR. During a restructuring process at DR, in-house dramaturges were cut because writers had complained about their control and influence (see Redvall 2013, 71). In the meantime, public-service commissioners in Germany are also making efforts, at least for some individual projects, to achieve faster and more efficient decision-making and production processes. Most notable of these is ZDFneo, a slightly younger subchannel of the public broadcaster ZDF, which has developed a so-called instant series, through which it tested extremely rapid editor feedback, slimmed-down filming during the Covid-19 pandemic and references to current sociopolitical events. For example, the “instant” comedy Drinnen—Im Internet sind alle gleich/Inside—On the Internet Everybody Is Equal (ZDF, 2020, see Fig. 3.2), about a mother and wife contending with home-office isolation, aired when Covid-19 was determining the daily news. Like the series’ protagonist and many of its viewers, all those involved in production worked from home because of the contact ban in Germany at the beginning of the pandemic (see Krauß 2023a).

Fig. 3.2
A snapshot of a scene in the series Inside, on the Internet Everybody Is Equal display a woman looking at her phone.

An “instant” drama during the Covid-19 pandemic: Drinnen—Im Internet sind alle gleich. © ZDF/btf GmbH

Full size image

Shows such as Drinnen point to a new flexibility in the commissioning editor’s work. However, the idea that editorial supervision could disappear completely, especially with the new transnational streaming platforms, public programme providers and smaller commercial stations with leaner structures, and that creative freedom automatically leads to more quality—a notion that has been circulating in the industry for a while—is increasingly turning out to be a pipe dream. On the one hand, my surveys found dismissive voices in the industry regarding critical failures such as the Amazon production You Are Wanted, which reportedly was made without editor input but nevertheless—or perhaps precisely because of this—developed an extremely complicated project network. On the other hand, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are increasingly bringing experts in German-language fiction development in-house, including staff from public-service broadcasting, as evidenced by an editor for Das kleine Fernsehspiel (The Little Television Play) moving from ZDF to Netflix in 2018. Although long-time ZDF editor Lucas Schmidt left Netflix after just under a year (presumably due to a different corporate culture and less creative freedom; see Zarges 2019), it can be said that transnational platforms and German Redakteursfernsehen, or editors’ television, have nevertheless come a little closer together.

Thanks to increases in staffing, US-based streaming companies no longer necessarily outsource editorial and dramaturgical support abroad, as they did with their first German “originals”. The big streaming companies originating in the US still, however, support transnational networks, and thus clashes between different production cultures also still arise. In my interviews, the practitioners contrasted different ways of working in a transcultural manner. For example, Jantje Friese (2019) praised Netflix representatives, and specifically the company’s vice president for international originals, Kelly Luegenbiehl, who oversaw Dark (2017–20), for being “very, very creatively oriented”: “It’s more about being the wind beneath the wings than the ballast on top”. In Friese’s opinion, a positive orientation towards productivity and a clear, shared goal characterises the US “mindset”, while in Germany long-harboured doubts make practitioners question whether “the finish line […] somewhere way over there” can even be reached.

In this context, Friese was probably alluding to Netflix’s early greenlighting within the German industry: the company gave the green light to several projects at a very early stage, on the basis of synopses—an approach that creatives and producers praised (e.g. Buffoni et al. 2020). The uncertainty typical to the long development of a screenplay—that is, whether it will ever be realised—is thus avoided. The other side of the coin, however, seems to be more comprehensive control from the very beginning. Fatima Varhos (in Buffoni et al. 2020), the producer of the Swedish family series Bonusfamiljen/Bonus Family (SVT/Netflix, 2017–), adapted by ARD in 2019, reported at the 2020 Berlinale Series Market that Netflix producers were involved every step of the way and gave continuous feedback on even minor decisions, beyond commenting on individual script versions. Varhos’s diplomatic praise for the great transparency of the streaming company, which is generally considered a “black box” in the industry and in its analysis, can of course also be interpreted as meaning that writers and other actors in the project network are subject to strict control. Against this background, the idea of a quality drama free from editors’ involvement at new platforms proved to be unrealistic.

An ambivalent picture of these new commissioners and their editorial work also emerged in view of indications that, in some cases, they pay below standardised industry rates or outside established structures (Pham 2022), along with the possibility that they are more concerned with quick development and producing a large number of marketable titles than with the quality of the series. More established or traditional competitors, on the other hand, have described themselves as being more selective and quality-oriented, presumably partly as a bid to present themselves as attractive partners in the industry-wide battle for talent and content.

In the next chapter, I provide an overview of these different commissioners in Germany—both the long-standing broadcasters and the relatively new streaming services. The chapter also describes further institutional actors in Germany’s television landscape who work alongside the commissioning editors and within the project networks at discussion so far. It additionally delineates crucial production areas in the national industry.

Notes

  1. 1.

    Chapter 8 clarifies this field of tension by discussing how practitioners negotiate production cultures in script development.

  2. 2.

    The issue of agency becomes more concrete in the discussions of financing and distribution (Chapter 5) and production cultures in screenplay development (Chapter 8).

  3. 3.

    The guidelines covered four areas in particular. The interviewees were first to briefly describe their activity in television series production and their path there; second, to assess the quality of TV drama from Germany; and third, to evaluate production and especially development processes. Fourth, the guidelines touched on the series project, as represented by the respective interviewees, and its genesis. An additional, smaller consideration was the changing distribution environment, which has also diversified modes of reception and target groups.

  4. 4.

    The full list of German series case studies to acquire the interviewees is: Babylon Berlin (ARD/Sky Deutschland, 2017–), Club der roten Bänder/Red Band Society (Vox, 2015–17), Dark (Netflix, 2017–20), Deutschland 83/86/89 (RTL/Amazon Prime Video, 2015–20), Drinnen—Im Internet sind alle gleich/Inside—On the Internet All Are Equal (ZDF, 2020), DRUCK/SKAM Germany (Funk/ZDF, 2018–), ECHT/Real (ZDF, 2021–), Eichwald, MdB (ZDF, 2014–19), Mitten in Deutschland: NSU/NSU German History X (ARD et al. 2016), Die Stadt und die Macht/The City and the Power (ARD/NDR/Degeto, 2016), Das Verschwinden/The Disappearance (ARD et al. 2017), Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo/We Children from Zoo Station (Amazon Prime Video et al. 2021) and 4 Blocks (TNT Serie, 2017–19). See also Krauß 2023c, 23–30.

  5. 5.

    At the time of the interview, HR’s fiction department held a special role in the German TV industry. This broadcaster mostly still developed and produced television films in-house, instead of outsourcing them as commissioned productions, which is the more common scenario.

  6. 6.

    For a more detailed description of the analysis and interpretation of my data, see Krauß 2023c, 32–35.