Engaging the audience: Production perspectives in current affairs television

Television producers attempt to engage an audience with the pro- grammes they make. Increasingly, digital and on-demand services give audience members more freedom in how they engage. Audiences can choose when and where they watch television, and they can more easily share content, interact or produce content themselves. This digital me- dia context provides television producers with both opportunities and challenges in their attempts to engage audiences in new and different ways. Different production logics into audience engagement seem to be required, as the production of television has traditionally been rather closed to its audience.
For that reason, this dissertation studies the production practices and motivations of television producers in their attempts to engage their au- dience in a digital media context. Specifically, production processes of current affairs programmes at the Flemish public service media institu- tion VRT are studied. This research adds a production studies perspec- tive with the use of ethnographically inspired methods into the daily practices inside editorial offices.