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16327
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Catherine Johnson, Branding Television, Routledge Chapman & Hall, London 2011, pp. 224
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
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Reviews / Comptes rendus
2012-10-01
2021-09-09
2012-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Deborah Toschi
2012/10/01
Università degli Studi di Pavia
2036-461X
19
en
Catherine Johnson, Branding Television, Routledge Chapman & Hall, London 2011, pp. 224
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16327/17194
12
REVIEWS / COMPTES-RENDUS


                                                     erates develop new services, which entails that
Branding Television,                                 organizing content is more similar to database

London 2011, pp. 224                                 The author argues that in the digital era, brands
                                                     do not function as form of recognition, but as
  In Branding Television
studies the development of branding in US and        ideas and values, which spread also through
UK television industries, exploring the reasons      corporate social responsibility campaigns. In
who these different industries address.              this landscape Hulu is an interesting reality, it is
                                                     a joint venture platform between Fox, NBS and
a critical analysis of the industrial and legisla-   Disney, but it does not publicize the relation-

1980s, the deregulation of the Republican gov-       underlines that Hulu does not promote a partic-
ernment under Ronald Regan deteriorates the          ular product or a company but an experience,
oligopoly of the three main broadcasters: NBC,       its brand focuses on selling a service.


analyzing scheduling, advertising and promo-         service broadcasting policy. Compared to the
                                                     European landscape, commercial channel was
which communicates in terms of brand not only        introduced early in the UK, but ITV and state
                                                     BBC share the same public service broadcasting
to advertisers and employees. The presence of
new competitors forces also the big three to                                                          -
embrace the brand strategies through innova-                                                          -
tive campaigns. This experience demonstrates         ternative terrestrial mass channel is Channel 5,
that niche cable channels can easily built a         which is aimed at a younger audience. Channel
differentiated brand identity, while national        5 builds its brand identity on youth power and
                                                     on an alternative programme, identifying a gap
program mix. HBO is the only channel that de-        in the previous national television landscape. In
velops both strategies, in order to obtain larger    the late 1990s, digital terrestrial television de-
numbers of subscribers and income from syn-          velops in Europe and every British broadcaster
dication and merchandising. Over the 1990s,          sets up new channels based on existing channel
new technologies and the business of media           brands. The public BBC conquests new net-
conglomerates radically alter the US landscape,                                                       -
changing the viewing experience and turn the
uses of television set itself, for instance it’s     BBC Online, but it prefers to launch different
possible to use television as a monitor for a        brand identities, so the new channels are called
computer or to access on line. In the digital era,   UKTV People (then Blighty), UKTV History
content creators can distribute their products on
                         1
                          . The major conglom-

CINÉMA & CIE, vol. XII, no. 19, Fall 2012                                                            147
BBC initials in the name of the channel. Also

                                                      multiplicity. Moreover, it adapts well to types
4oD (on demand channel) or 4Mobile (mobile
service), but in distinctly separate sites. In this   Most of all, program branding shows the loss
                                                      of centrality of television channels, as site to
between public and commercial service broad-
casting are declined. In this perspective, brand      one site for distribute programmes also avail-
                                                -     able online .
nicate also the value of public service to the          Branding Television analyzes different strate-
national audience.                                    gies from channel branding to quality schedule
  Finally, the author considers the different el-     branding, from relationship branding to service
ements that build the brand identity – such as        branding and to programme branding in the
                                                      UK and the US landscape. While other recent
appearance – and chooses to focus her attention
                                                                                 2
                                                                                   and Banet-Weier3
on interstitials between the programmes. This         more thoroughly analyze a single brand identi-
aspect of brand communication received rela-
tively poor attention from previous researches.       of case studies: from different broadcasts of
A further area of analysis is connected to the        two different nations and addressing both com-
                                                      mercial and public services. Instead traditional
posters, promotion on magazines. In fact, these
paratexts contribute to assign a precise mean-        form service brand associated to corporation,
ing to a program, a channel, a broadcaster.                                                          -
                                                      tion. Moreover, to compare corporate, channel/
of interstitials on main British channels: BBC        service and a program’s brand as interrelated
One, ITV1 and Channel 4. These ancillary              elements allows to consider television as a cul-
                                                      tural form and to understand its evolution from
used to give coherence to an inhomogeneous            a different perspective.
scheduling of the public service. Instead in the                                    [Deborah Toschi,
US landscape, NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox ini-                              Università degli Studi di Pavia]
tially utilize interstitials in a more commercial
way, to retain the audience. In the digital era,      1   T.M. Todreas, Value Creation and Branding in
both UK and US broadcasting use interstitials             Television’s Digital Age
to steer the spectator toward a multiplatform             In 1999.
                                                      2   P. Temporal, The Branding of MTV. Will Internet
offer of programmes and services. However,
                                                          Kill the Video Star?
in this age, emerges the importance of brand          3   S. Banet-Weiser, Kids Rule! Nickelodeon and
for the high concept programs, which extends              Consumer Citizienship,
the text through the transmedia storytelling.




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