Over the last decade, research into the production of popular culture, or rather the media industries in general, has taken flight. With the introduction of Caldwell’s Production Cultures (2008) as a starting point, many academics have dedicated their attention to material organization of the creative industries. How are media industries spatially organized? How do they cluster into creative hubs, and why? What are the working conditions in the creative industries (precarious labor)? And many more questions were and are under scrutiny (see for example, Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011; Gill, 2014; Mayer, Banks and Caldwell 2011). Interestingly enough, after Caldwell’s inside perspective on the media industries there have not been many studies offering a similar one. Most studies highlight one aspect of media organizations (mostly management level or the ‘writing room’). A more in-depth perspective on what the everyday practices within the media industries is still largely absent. Such a perspective is important to understand how the power configurations laid bare in studies on content and consumption of popular culture comes into existence.
This study aims to add an insider perspective to the current status quo on the production of the popular. The project forms a small part of a larger project revolving around big data and creative production. The study at hand deals with a qualitative exploration of creativity ‘pur sang’. How is creating popular culture understood by the ones who create it? What does each team member contribute? What kind of boundaries are experienced? To answer these (and other) questions, we interviewed all 15 members of the ‘creative unit’ at Talpa Network early January 2020. The interviews were open and qualitative of character, meaning that we used a topic list but no preformulated list of questions. Using an active interview approach, each interview was co-created by interviewee and interviewer (Holstein & Gubrium, 1999). All interviews were transcribed ad verbum after which they were subjected to a Foucauldian discourse analysis. This analysis was guided by three questions: 1) what is creativity? 2) which strategies are employed to maintain creativity? 3) who defines creativity and its boundaries?.
Results indicate a classic alignment between the concepts of ‘creativity’ and ‘making things’. Working as a team, everyone’s contribution to the creative process is acknowledged, but there is distinct hierarchy between the ideators and the more practical ‘production’ team members. The mystique around creativity of ideators is highly valued and the team is organized around those 4 team members who could be said to be the source of all creativity. Additionally, discourses on inspiration, and how even the smallest inspirational particles can be found everywhere, are geared to maintain the positions of ideators. However, the ideators do not take up subject positions in these discourses: it is other team members that articulate creativity and set boundaries for this articulation of creativity to flourish. In our conclusion we will discuss these findings in the light of production culture, its power configurations and its consequences for the end products.