Kenneth Longden is an academic and lecturer in Film, Television, and Media at the University of Salford. He has written on TV to Film Adaptations, Global Jane Austen, and German film. He is a regular contributor to
Canned TV has been a television industry practice almost from the start of television itself and was a way in which local/nationally-produced television programmes gained extra revenue by travelling, under licence, around the world. As well as providing extra revenue, this process also provided, often unintentionally, various opportunities for branding – both at the broadcaster level and at the national level. However, using Channel 4’s OD platform, Walter Presents, this essay will consider the state of canned TV in more contemporary terms related to global and transnational ideas where television in general, and canned TV in particular, describe a transformed media culture.
Canned TV has been a television industry practice almost from the start of television itself, and a way in which local/nationally-produced television programmes gained extra revenue by travelling, under licence, around the world. In these respects, we can think of canned TV in terms of post-production practices, practices that have evolved along with new technologies, new commercial opportunities, and new strategies aimed at audiences, production, and consumption in television. For some, these processes of post-production have become more significant in recent years. For both Verevis
Walter Presents: “Want More World Drama?”
Using Channel 4’s OD platform, Walter Presents, this essay will consider the state of canned TV in more contemporary terms related to global and transnational ideas where television in general, and canned TV in particular, can be used to examine and describe a transformed media culture.
This paper, therefore, will examine how Walter Presents not only describes change in contemporary TV, but changes in the concept of contemporary canned TV. It will examine how Walter Presents highlights acts of curation in contemporary TV, with particular reference to Amanda Lotz’s
Historically, canned TV was largely a commercial opportunity, an opportunity which took advantage of new technological developments that allowed TV to be recorded, stored, and re-transmitted. As well as providing extra revenue, the practice of canned TV also provided, often unintentionally, various opportunities for branding – both at the broadcaster level and at the national level. As Werbach
However, as Bielby and Harrington observe, the global market for canned TV started with the export of syndicated American TV shows, launched in the mid-1950s.
These changes and developments continue apace today, revitalised mostly by streaming services in need of a substantial catalogue of popular and diverse TV programmes, that are often curated by media professionals to meet the demands of a competitive and diverse TV market.
Historically, canned TV highlighted the production and consumption of domestic network TV, and the dynamics of network TV syndication, a dynamic that is particularly important to the unique selling point of Walter Presents. However, it is worth noting that Walter Presents is not a Broadcaster, but a content provider, and therefore historical concepts of syndication in TV go only so far in explaining Walter Present’s business model. Canned TV still plays a large part in network TV schedules, and perhaps even more so in a diverse and competitive TV market. But this dynamic has arguably changed as a result of competitive transnational flows in television, and as a result of technological change. The British public service channel, Channel 4, itself born out of big changes in the TV industry in 1982, has become synonymous in Britain with diversity in programming, diversity of audiences, and syndicated, canned TV programming, sold on the back of the quality TV phenomenon. In fact, Channel 4 has not only embraced digital, technological, and market force change in ways that other public service channels have not, it has arguably recontextualised the canned TV experience through its adoption of Walter Presents who provide viewers with the local/domestic TV experience as experienced elsewhere around the world, and arguably as part of a Postproduction culture.
The Channel 4 Logo.
Channel 4 is a commercially funded public service broadcaster in the UK with a remit to provide innovative programming not found on other UK public service channels. Its past success has largely been attributed to its practice of showcasing unusual and ‘challenging’ original programming, but it has also gained a reputation for broadcasting imported (mainly US) ‘canned’ quality TV dramas. In this last respect, its long-standing association with HBO has been significant to its brand allowing it to showcase exclusive content such as
However, as Catherine Johnson has observed, this practice of showcasing imported canned TV dramas from America has tended to clash with “Channel 4’s remit to represent the diversity of British society, and to support the independent production sector in Britain”.
As a case study, Channel 4’s Walter Presents provides an unusual example of contemporary canned television – the transnational circulation of ready-made, and typically national/local television content for global consumption – whilst at the same mirroring similar practices of other content providers in the TV industry who have made use of new digital, streaming technology. As Lotz, Lobato and Thomas
Whilst the practice of canned television has been around from the earliest years of television, more recent practices describe a contemporary television landscape that has taken full advantage of emerging digital technologies, and potentially serves to describe the dynamics of transnational flows in the contemporary media landscape. As Lotz, Lobato and Thomas observe, “The rapid growth of internet-distributed television services worldwide” has not only changed consumption and production practices in television, but also “presents an array of research opportunities, challenges, and possibilities of transnational comparison”.
The Walter Presents Selection.
As such, contemporary ideas of canned television have potentially come to describe certain new technological innovations and production practices, new expectations and practices in TV viewing, and new academic approaches to understanding the complex dynamics and veracities of the transnational in the contemporary media landscape. As Bielby and Harrington observe in their study of
The ‘Walter Presents’ Portals.
As just one example, Channel 4’s Walter Presents epitomises how new technologies have introduced global and transnational dimensions to the television experience. Interestingly, however, it places a lot of emphasis on the national television experience. In this respect, Walter Presents draws attention to practices usually associated with canned TV. Walter Presents has become successful in securing the rights of shows that were either not valuable or appealing for other players on the market, or just simply ignored due to their local/national, or even parochial flavour. With traditional industry practices concerning canned TV changing, largely due to digital technology and the advent of internet-distributed television, it is important to identify the nature of that change. Walter Presents, for example, highlights contemporary acts of curation in internet-distributed television in ways that other similar services do not. In this respect Amanda Lotz’s work on
Walter Presents exemplifies these new practices and, unlike other similar platforms and services, Walter Presents deliberately draws attention to the creative professionals and processes behind them via the eponymous Walter Iuzzolino. If Lotz’s work on Portals aims to describe a changing television landscape, this examination of Walter Presents aims to highlight how these changes have re-articulated the concept of canned TV through acts of media curation. Similarly, these acts of curation introduce the potential of examining canned TV and Walter Presents through the concept of a Postproduction Culture. For both Bourriaud and Verevis, Post-Production Culture describes and promotes the idea of ‘value added’
The ‘Walter Presents’ Logo.
One of its selling points is that the platform both curates and presents the national for transnational consumption. In other words, it acquires nationally broadcast TV dramas from various countries, curates them into a library of TV content, then provides access to these dramas via the Walter Presents platform. However, in terms of the national and the transnational this dynamic is complex. For example, it provides something similar, yet very different to Valaskivi’s concept of ‘Cool Nation Branding’ (2015). As Valaskivi observes, the aim of cool-nation branding for national Broadcasters is to construct “a national identity for consumption by transnational, if not global, markets”.
Walter Presents is not the original national broadcaster for these various TV dramas, it is merely a content provider, but it does promote the pleasures and cultural kudos of watching Swiss crime dramas (
Further, and perhaps more significantly, none of the TV programmes available on Walter Presents were created with global distribution in mind, or at least, not originally with a global audience in mind. Walter Present’s showcasing of Belgium TV dramas is a case in point. As Mark Lawson of
Again, this is different to the Scandi-noir television phenomenon, where Scandinavian television producers have recognised the global market for their product, and have responded accordingly. It is this particular feature that Walter Presents promotes as a USP – that these TV dramas are usually restricted for local/national audiences. It is perhaps with this example where contemporary ideas concerning ‘canned’ or ‘finished’ TV becomes significant to understanding global flows in television. As Bielby and Harrington observe, although “the television industry is now global in scope, it is, first and foremost, a domestic industry born out of local concerns”
That these national/local TV dramas have not been made for global consumption and not usually viewed, except by indigenous/local audiences, tells us something about Walter Presents, television production, and canned TV in the contemporary media landscape. Local and national products and concerns still exist, and local culture still thrives in TV. Local culture, as provided for by local/national TV has become attractive to the global TV market and Walter Presents recognises that. Walter Presents draws attention to the local/national, and viewers are promised and provided with an ‘authentic’ local experience and not one created/branded originally for a global audience. In this last respect, Walter Presents also draws attention to previous incarnations of national TV consumption for global audiences, in particular the scandi-noir experience, a genre and aesthetic that has become all too globally familiar and pervasive. Walter Iuzzolino has recognised the scandi-noir phenomenon, recognised its global dimensions, and has decided to offer something different. These features of Walter Presents alone could form part of a post-production promise of ‘value added’.
Walter Presents therefore does brand these national TV programmes, as indicative of national tastes, culture, etc., but in doing so the platform also makes a point of their potential exoticism. Walter Presents changes the original context of these dramas – a key feature of Post Production Culture - by branding these nationally produced dramas as part of an exclusive, cultural, transnational television viewing experience. This change of context is facilitated by digital technology and new industrial practices that have embraced transnational and global dynamics. Walter Presents offers to provide national TV dramas that are indicative of ‘normal’, local scheduled TV. It provides access to content and a viewing experience usually reserved for local audiences but changes the context in which they were first produced and first experienced by local audiences. In all of these respects, we can consider Walter Presents in terms of a post-production culture.
Walter Presents, therefore, represents and constructs the national, transnationally, by proxy and in a variety of interesting and highly symbolic ways. Not least, Walter Presents offers an opportunity to consider transnational flows and canned TV in terms of a Post-production culture that Verevis describes as suggesting ‘value added’. This idea of ‘value added’ is significant to the curated, ‘canned’ television experience.
The ‘Walter Presents’ Catalogue.
Serving as just one example, Channel 4’s Walter Presents not only represents and constructs the concept and practice of contemporary canned television, but how this practice can also be understood in terms of what Bourriaud (2002), and Verevis (2016) describe as a ‘Post-production culture’.
As both Bourriaud and Verevis observe, Post-production culture describes “a combination of forces – conglomeration, globalization, and digitization”
As indicative of a Post-production culture, therefore, Walter Presents arguably describes a transformed media culture where existing television texts are reproduced (translation/subtitles), recontextualised, repurposed and resituated to meet the commercial and cultural pressures of contemporary media consumers and producers. If we examine each of these claims in more detail, we not only highlight the commercial and cultural development of canned TV, but the dynamics of a Post-production culture as envisioned by Verevis, Bourriaud, and Constandinides.
If we consider how the drama series’ showcased on Walter Presents could be described as being re-produced in accordance with a ideas of a Post-production culture concept, then we need to see how these dramas may have changed in the transition from their original broadcast space, to the space of the Walter Presents platform. One detail concerns the act of translation and the use of subtitles.
Re-titles, subtitles, translations and new publicity (paratexts, etc.) not only show a re-modelled and re-produced product, but describe “a digitized, globalized… [TV landscape] in which multiple versions proliferate and co-exist”.
This concept of a Post-production Culture can act partly as an analytical framework, to explain the dynamics of Walter Presents, its significance to understanding change in the contemporary television landscape, and how it may offer insights into the evolution of canned TV.
Walter Iuzzolino.
As with many other streaming services, Walter Presents provides a curated library of content, according to Lotz who describes it as a “particular curation tactic”,
Instead, the curated experience of Walter Presents has gone back to local/national terrestrial TV in its search for distinctive programming. Whilst it can be considered a niche market curation tactic, it is interesting to note that the curated content on offer via Walter Presents was never intended to be as such; rather it was produced locally as typical, standard (if high quality) scheduled TV programming.
For streaming services, producers, and for audiences, the concept and practice of curation, has become more significant to contemporary TV production and the viewing experience, but it has also become a key feature of the contemporary media landscape in general. For Rosenbaum, “Curation is the act of individuals with a passion for a content area to find, contextualize, and organize information”.
The example provided here is typical of how Walter Iuzzolino introduces new dramas to the audience. We can see the passion Iuzzolino invests in his introduction to the series, but significantly he also provides a context for a Swiss crime drama, the sort of national TV drama we would not expect to see outside Switzerland. It is niche, obscure, exotic, and suggests exclusive viewing, but the programme is also sold as typical scheduled Swiss television fare.
Walter presents: 10. Watch the full video
Iuzzolino’s introduction is important. It acts as a guarantee of quality as well as fan viewing. As Rosenbaum observes, the “emergence of the curation economy creates a greater need” not only for “trusted sources”, but trusted curators. Curation is “the new role for media professionals”,
“The freedom to curate only programmes and genres that interest them”
“That ‘weird child’ who was obsessed with gathering information and objects related to television”.
“Pro-am curators are not passive consumers, but active and participatory”.
Further, Kate Abbot of
“This project is British TV’s highest-profile case of the currently fashionable concept of ‘curated programming’. The sell to viewers is that Walter Iuzzolino…has made a personal selection of his favourites from 3,500 hours of foreign-language box sets”.
For Kaplan, “Curation, in media circles, has come to mean the thoughtful gathering of information produced by others for presentation to (yet) others”.
It is here that we might be able to see not only how curation has become significant to the contemporary internet distributed television, but also how post-production culture and practices have provided a sense of ‘value added’ to these examples of local/nationally-produced programmes.
When talking about Walter Presents as an example of new media practices that can go towards a description of a Post-Production Culture, we should also discern how Walter Presents offers the idea of ‘value added’. Walter Presents is a streaming service that encapsulates the dynamics of contemporary television practices in all its complexities, complexities that have impacted upon contemporary canned TV. As Moran has observed, “thanks to new technology, deregulation and privatization”, plus the increase in broadcast channel capacity, “the world picture of canned program production and export had become more complicated”
But there are other elements, some discussed already, where we can identify and consider aspects of value added. The individual local/national TV dramas that Walter Presents provide, have changed in ways that were not imagined in their original creation and production, and certainly not anticipated or experienced by their original target audience. These dramas have become niche, potentially exotic, and almost certainly deemed rare in the sense they have not been previously available to British/global audiences. Whilst we could argue that in the early days of canned TV, American TV dramas had a certain allure for largely the same reasons, they were chosen or bought by local broadcasters because they were deemed suitable for normal scheduled TV, both because they shared a common language, but also a largely common ideological message and familiar culture. This is not always the case with Walter Presents. In fact, the value-added concept largely revolves around ideas of difference, the unusual, and exotic.
This concept of ‘value-added’, as indicative of a Post-Production culture can also be considered in relation to contemporary curated TV, and in relation to canned TV as a whole. By using Walter Presents as an example, contemporary canned TV needs to be discerned through a transformed media landscape where contemporary television has not become less local or national, but where these elements have become lucrative and appealing. Through a transformed media landscape, local and national TV, as evinced by Walter Presents, has become the object of the transnational circulation of ready-made, and typically national/local television content for global consumption.
Constantine Verevis, “Remakes, Sequels, Prequels,” in
Nicolas Bourriaud,
Amanda D. Lotz,
Kevin Werbach, “Syndication: The Emerging Model for Business in the Internet Era,”
Ibid.
Ibid.
Denise D. Bielby and C. Lee Harrington,
Ibid.
Catherine Johnson, “Tele-Branding in TVIII: The Network as Brand and the Programme as Brand,”
Amanda D. Lotz, Ramon Lobato, and Julian Thomas, “Internet-Distributed Television Research: A Provocation,”
Raymond Williams,
Ramon Lobato, “Rethinking International TV Flows Research in the Age of Netflix,”
Lotz et al., “Internet-Distributed Television Research”, 35.
Lobato “Rethinking International TV Flows Research,” 244.
Ibid., 245.
Ibid., 242.
Bielby and Harrington,
Lotz,
Constantine Verevis, “The Cinematic Return,”
Katja Valaskivi,
Mark Lawson, “Is Belgian Drama the New Scandi-Noir?,”
Bielby and Harrington,
Verevis, “The Cinematic Return”.
Ibid.
Albert Moran,
Costas Constandinides,
Verevis, “Remakes, Sequels, Prequels”, 267.
Moran,
Lotz,
Wendy Mitchell. “Walter Iuzzolino: Too Much Streaming Funding is Leading to ‘Non-Distinctive’ Shows,”
Steve Rosenbaum, “Can ‘Curation’ Save Media?,”
Ibid.
Bielby and Harrington,
Alan McKee and Johanna Dore, “Pro-Am Curators of Australian Television History: How Is Their Practice Different from That of Professional Television Historians?,”
Kate Abbot, “‘It’s better than
Merrill Kaplan, “Curation and Tradition on Web 2.0,” in
Moran,
Ibid., 460.
“What makes Danish TV Drama Series Travel?”,