To Be Continued: Conclusion and Outlook

The concluding chapter highlights the broader transformation processes of television against which practitioners have negotiated the quality TVQuality TV drama in Germany and its storytelling and screenwriting practices. Linked to the multiplication and expansion of the television landscape (in and beyond Germany), this final chapter addresses changes in distribution, in programmes, in production methods and especially in screenwriting as well as reception. The interviewed and observed TV practitioners repeatedly dealt with the socialisation of viewers in Germany, which is manifesting in increasingly specialised and diversified target groupsTarget group with tastes in foreign markets and in the transforming digital media environment. The practitioners’ discussions also repeatedly touched upon other criteria for and ways of evaluating viewers’ feedback, besides the quantitative audienceAudience rating that has dominated for years. The German quality TVQuality TV drama as negotiated and approached by the TV professionals stands at the beginning of a digitalised television based on data and algorithms, and thereby differently conceived audiences. By describing the multidimensional industry discourse on quality drama, the conclusion also maps such fundamental, ongoing changes in television production and writing, in Germany and beyond.