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Television Histories in Development

On October 2nd 2021 we will celebrate 70 years of television in the Netherlands. While this is a milestone worth celebrating, it also offers an opportunity to look back at the medium’s rich international histories. Television has survived its many predicted deaths and adapted constantly to changing social, cultural and technological trends and demands. This international conference aims to further existing debates and reflect on the academic study of television history so far.

Academic conference

30 Sep - 1 Oct 2021

€50
€20 for students, the precariously employed and anyone else who needs it
includes coffee/tea, lunches and reception

Free attendance online

Television Histories in Development

Philips TX400

The conference will be hosted by the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision in Hilversum, one of the most extensive audio-visual archives in Europe. It will take place during the Dutch Media Week and will be part of several activities related to the 70-year anniversary of Dutch television.

Organising committee:

Professor Huub Wijfjes, Dr Josette Wolthuis, Grietje Hoogland MA
Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision

Keynotes:

Professor Amanda Lotz (Queensland University of Technology)
Professor Helen Wheatley (Centre for Television Histories, University of Warwick)
Professor Misha Kavka (University of Amsterdam)
Professor Huub Wijfjes (University of Amsterdam/University of Groningen)

Conference programme

Day 1: Thursday 30 September

08:30-09:00	Registration
09:00-10:00	Welcome + Keynote I: Huub Wijfjes - Television Histories in Development
10:00-10:30	Coffee break - on location or in Gather.town
10:30-12:15	Parallel panels I When Old Television Was New \| Chair: Josette Wolthuis Jamie Medhurst (remote) - Laying the foundations: the BBC Television Service, 1932-35 John Wyver (remote) - Early television beyond the home: the multiple sites of the medium in Britain, 1930-1939 Anne-Katrin Weber (remote) - Television’s Forgotten “Big History”: CCTV as an Universal Medium New Perspectives in Television Historiography \| Chair: Misha Kavka Joseph Oldham (on location) - Mythmaking and Popular Television Historiography: The Case of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (BBC 2, 1979) Brett Mills (remote) - Anthropocentrism in the Archive: On Television History as a Speciesist Practice Matthew Floyd (remote) - Constructing a history of television from precarious archives with the Edinburgh International TV Festival Political Interference in Television I \| Chair: Eggo Müller Jo Bardoel and Huub Wijfjes (on location) - ‘Different Histories’. Netherlands’ public broadcasting and its adaptive capacities to transformations in technology and society, 1919-2020 Jelena Ćulibrk (remote) - Educational imperialism? The BBC and Non-Aligned Movement’s New World Information and Communication Order, 1969-198 Mari Pajala & Laura Saarenmaa (remote) - Re-evaluating television’s era of scarcity: The ethos of “culture television” in Finland, 1975–1985 Emil Stjernholm (remote) - A Clash of Ideals: The Introduction of Televised Information in Sweden, 1969–1972
12:15-13:15	Lunch - on location or in Gather.town
13:15-14:15	Keynote II: Helen Wheatley - Television History in Action: Ghost Town and Encounters with the Archive
14:15-16:00	Parallel panels II Women's Stories from the Television Industry \| Chair: Josette Wolthuis Vicky Ball (remote) - Writing Women in to Histories of British Television Drama Jeannine Baker (remote) - Listening to the voices of women in early Australian television production Morgan Wait (remote) - “It was the job”: Production Assistants and Research Assistants at Radio Telifís Éireann Histories of Children’s Television Around the World \| Chair: Yuval Gozansky Grietje Hoogland (on location) - From Dikkie Dik to Alfred J. Kwak: What non-animated Dutch youth television programs can tell us about animating for television Maya Götz (remote) - The Development of Children’s Television in Germany Mónica Maruri Castillo (remote) - Ecuador´s television did not consider children as a valuable audience Xiaoying Han (remote) - Entertaining Flowers of the Motherland: The Evolution and Commercialisation of Children’s Television in China Political Interference in Television II \| Chair: Jo Bardoel Yuji Miyazaki (remote) - How was Television Criticism Possible? : Textual Analysis of Soichi Ōya’s TV criticism in the Late 1950s Japan Shenglan Qing (remote) - Voting mechanisms, regulations, and audiences’ distrust: 15-year history of reality competition programs in China Victoria Baltag (on location) - The inception and the development of television in Romania: challenges and opportunities Felipe Muanis (remote) - Power and television in Brazil: the rise of conservatism in 71 years of history Broadcast Anniversaries in Media Histories I - FIAT/IFTA \| Chair: Dana Mustata A special programme by FIAT/IFTA Dana Mustata (on location) - Introducing the FIAT/IFTA Media Studies Commission (MSC): Highlighted Research from the MSC Study Grant Bríd Dooley (remote) - Looking Forward. Looking Back. Celebrations and approaches to marking anniversaries in public service broadcasting over decades and what they can tell us about the evolution of Television itself. Bas Agterberg (on location) - Who is celebrating Television's anniversary?
16:00-16:30	Tea break - on location or in Gather.town
16:30-18:00	Parallel panels III Gender in Television Research \| Chair: Alec Badenoch Sarah Arnold (on location) - Massaging the daytime audience data: (Mis)locating women in US television audience research Josette Wolthuis (on location) - Dressing for Dutch Television: How clothes tell us about television history Quratulain Malik (remote) - Democracy versus Dictatorship: Influence on Gender representation in Pakistani TV Drama Developments in Documentary \| Chair: Huub Wijfjes Mary Irwin (remote) - Women and Early Postwar BBC Television Documentary Patrick McCurdy (remote) - Tarry Tarry Night: The sticky legacy of the banned Canadian television docudrama Tar Sands Amir Bashti Monfared (remote) - Returning Home: Interrelated Aspects of Television and Social Impact Documentaries (SIDs) Music Television Histories \| Chair: Misha Kavka Sofia Veiera Lopes (on location) - Music, history and collective memories – The strategies of the Portuguese National Broadcaster to build its own future Jaap Kooijman (on location) - Freedom of CyberChoice: TMF as an early experiment with interactive music television, 2001-2005 Alicja Sułkowska (remote) - On-Demand: Hallyu’s appropriation of SNS as an example of post-television patterns Broadcast Anniversaries in Media Histories II - FIAT/IFTA \| Chair: Herbert Hayduck Grietje Hoogland (on location) - The Archival Turn: a response to Sonja de Leeuw’s article ‘The Archive as Network’ Einion Gruffudd (remote) - The National Broadcast Archive of Wales: A Milestone for Welsh Television History Round table discussion - On Academic Research and (Digital) Archives Screening - Archival material by FIAT/IFTA members on the beginnings of television across Europe, moderated by Herbert Hayduck

Day 2: Friday 1 October

08:30-09:00	Registration
09:00-10:00	Keynote III: Amanda Lotz - Television? Balancing historical context and hegemony in examining industrial adaptation
10:00-10:30	Coffee break - on location or in Gather.town
10:30-12:15	Parallel panels IV Broadcast vs. Streaming Television \| Chair: Huub Wijfjes John Ellis (remote) - Has streaming killed the culture of live TV? Eggo Müller (remote) - Broadcast television vs. streaming services: Societal implications of the logics of two different distribution systems Dominic Lees (remote) - Televisuality in high-end drama 2008-2020: distinction, authorship and style Michael L. Wayne (on location) - Too Much and Too Fast: Digital Distribution and the Challenge of Global Television’s Recent Past Television and Collective Memory \| Chair: Grietje Hoogland Christina Ferraz Musse, Valquíria Aparecida Passos Kneipp & Cristiane Finger (remote) - Brazilian television news: seven decades that have built the collective memory of the country Max Sexton (remote) - Space Exploration on TV: Shaping Collective Memory in Mars Joanne Garde Hansen (remote) - Deluge and Tempest in the Archive: An Alternative Environmental History of Television Dana Mustata (on location) - Television as a Historical Object of Study in the Digital Age Politics and Television \| Chair: Jo Bardoel Betto van Waarden (on location) & Mathias Johansson (remote) - DEMOCRACY (NOT) ON DISPLAY: A text mining analysis of the Mother of All Parliaments’ reluctance to televise herself Malte Fischer (remote) , Harm Kaal (on location) & Solange Ploeg (on location) - Interaction between citizens and politicians on TV in West-Germany and the Netherlands in the sixties and seventies Hilde Lavell (on location) - Television logic in the Dutch parliament in the 1960s and 1970s Alexandra Micciche (remote) - Making the invisible(s) visible: Father Dominique Pire, the Displaced Persons and the Belgian public television in the 1950’s
12:15-13:15	Lunch - on location or in Gather.town
13:15-14:15	Keynote IV: Misha Kavka - Reality @ Home: Dutch Television (Re)Invents Big Brother
14:15-16:00	Parallel panels V Competition with/within Streaming \| Chair: Rosa van Santen Andrew Stubbs (remote) - Talent Intermediaries: Anonymous Content and the Independent Feature Packaging Technique Zeynep Gultekin Akcay (remote) - Turkish Series: Past-Present and Future Sushmita Pandit (remote) - The ephemeral history of television technologies in the Global South: Reflections from India Sitcom, Soap and Queer Aesthetics \| Chair: Misha Kavka Bradley Dixon (remote) - Parafiction in the 1950s sitcom: Meta humour and self-referentiality in The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show Gabrielle Ferreira (remote) - Growing up Between Television and Streaming: The Case of Brazilian Soap Opera Young Hearts (Malhação) Stephane Azarian (remote) - Queer(ing) Reality Television: storytelling, heritage and pedagogy
16:00-16:30	Tea break - on location or in Gather.town
16:30-18:15	Parallel panels VI Public and Commercial Network Identities \| Chair: Huub Wijfjes Daithi McMahon (remote) - Holding Their Own: How Line of Duty offers the BBC a competitive edge in an increasingly crowded mediascape Barbara Sadler (remote) - Using Television logos and interstitials as historical source: Mapping the decline of regional ITV companies and the development of a national ITV channel in England 1978- 2005 Sagrario Beceiro & Ana Méjon (remote) - When public service became commercial interest. A historical perspective on satellite television in Spain Marjolaine Boutet (on location) - Holocaust (NBC, 1978) and the privatization of European television channels Television and National Identity \| Chair: Rosa van Santen Toni Sant (remote) - Preserving Early Television Histories in Malta: 1955 – 1975 Elain Price (remote) - No ordinary channel – S4C, the successful minority language ‘experiment’ Lucas Martins Néia (remote) - How TV Fiction Built a Nation: A Cultural History of the Brazilian Telenovela Anirban Mukhopadhyay (remote) - Fragmented nation televised: Buniyaad and the narrative(s) of postcolonial India
18:15	Closing remarks + reception - on location or in Gather.town

Fee

There is no fee for attending remotely (online only). We will make use of Gather.town to provide a social space for online attendees.

The fee for those attending the conference on location is 50 euros (regular price) or 20 euros (reduced rate for students, the precariously employed and anyone else who needs it). This includes coffee/tea, lunches and reception.