Historical Perspectives in the Industry Discourse on ‘Quality TV’

In the German television industry, the discourse on ‘quality TV’ drama and its supposed lack in German TV fiction has been going on for several years. On the basis of interviews with TV professionals and participant observations at industry workshops, this chapter examines how producers negotiated television history and its possible influence on current TV drama in Germany. The practitioners’ discourse with both historical and contemporary traits revolved in particular around programmes (their content and aesthetic), the viewers, and production methods and cultures, especially in screenwriting. This article is structured according to these three fields, programme, reception and production, thereby building on Knut Hickethier’s model dispositif television. The historically grown dispositif structures of television, it becomes clear, also shape today’s ‘quality TV’ projects from Germany.