Notes · Media StudiesUK · A-Levels

Television in the Global Age

Television is one of the three in-depth forms of Paper 2, studied across all four framework areas and in its contexts. This topic covers the global, streaming-era context of long-form television, its media language and representations, its industry (public-service, commercial and subscription, global distribution and regulation) and its audiences, and models a comparative, synoptic analysis.

6 sections~20 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 3 · Advanced 2

T·101010 / 15

Exam profile

AO1 · Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the set television products, the relevant theories and their contextsAO2 · Analyse television across the framework, evaluate theories, and make synoptic connections and judgements

Operators:analysecompareevaluateapplyto what extenthow far

basic level

AS-Level expects framework analysis of the set television products and knowledge of the relevant theories.

higher level

The full A-Level requires sustained, synoptic analysis of long-form television across all four areas, comparing products and evaluating theories in extended responses.

Depth

Text

Contents · 6 sections

Television in the Global Age

Television in the global age: context#

FoundationAQA 7572/2 TelevisionDfE GCE Media Studies subject content

Television in the global age

Fig. 1The global-age context - globalisation, transnational production, long-form complexity and streaming - shapes every framework area of a television CSP.

Television is studied as an in-depth form, and the 'global age' framing signals the transformed context in which contemporary television is made and watched. Globalisation, the rise of transnational production and co-production, and above all the shift from scheduled broadcast to on-demand streaming have reshaped the form: television is now made for, and circulated across, international markets, and audiences increasingly watch what they choose, when they choose, from a global catalogue. This context shapes every framework area of a television CSP.

A defining feature of the era is 'long-form' or complex television: serial dramas with intricate, multi-strand narratives sustained across many episodes and seasons, high production values, and genre hybridity. This 'quality' or complex television, associated with subscription and streaming platforms seeking prestige, uses narrative and genre in sophisticated ways and invites intensive framework analysis - which is why the set television products are typically long-form dramas rather than, say, game shows.

The set television products are often chosen to enable comparison across contexts - for example a British product and a non-British (frequently European or international) product, or products from different periods - so that students can analyse how national, cultural and industrial contexts shape television differently. This comparative, transnational dimension is central to the 'global age' study: it foregrounds how television travels, how it is adapted or subtitled for other markets, and how audiences engage across borders.

The context also includes the industrial transformation of television: the pressure on public-service broadcasting, the growth of powerful global subscription platforms, and the new economics of streaming (data-driven commissioning, global rights, binge release). These industrial changes shape what television is made, how it looks, how it reaches audiences and how it is (or is not) regulated, connecting the television study directly to the industry theories and to the online-age topic.

For analysis, holding this global, streaming-era context in view is essential, because it explains the form of contemporary television - its complexity, its hybridity, its international address and its industrial character. A television CSP cannot be fully understood without its context, and the strongest answers weave the global-age context through the framework analysis, showing how the conditions of the era account for the product.

Worked example

Context shaping a long-form drama

Explain how the global-age context shapes a long-form television drama.

Industrial context
Made or acquired by a subscription/streaming platform seeking prestige and global reach, its high production values and complexity follow from that industrial ambition.
Cultural context
Designed to travel across markets (through subtitling or universal themes), its address is international as well as national.
Form
The context explains its long-form, multi-strand narrative, genre hybridity and 'quality' aesthetic.
Conclude
The drama's very form is a product of the global, streaming-era context - which the analysis must foreground.

Result: The example shows the global-age context explaining the drama's form - the contextual foundation for the framework analysis of a television CSP.

Typical mistakes

Analysing a television CSP without its global-age industrial and cultural context.
Treating television as a single, unchanging form and ignoring the transformation wrought by streaming and globalisation.

Active revision

Explain how the global, streaming-era context shapes the form of a long-form television product you have studied.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for media studies (Department for Education)

Media language of long-form television#

StandardAQA 7572/2 TelevisionDfE GCE Media Studies subject content

Media language of long-form television

Fig. 2Long-form television's media language - technical and symbolic codes, serial narrative and genre hybridity - analysed with the language theories.

The media language of long-form television is unusually rich because the form has time and space to develop complex narratives and dense codes. Its technical and symbolic codes - cinematography, editing, lighting, sound, mise-en-scene - are often cinematic in ambition, and analysis should decode them as it would a film's, moving from denotation to connotation and applying Barthes to the meanings they construct. The 'quality' aesthetic of complex television is itself a coded signal, connoting prestige and seriousness.

Narrative is where long-form television is most distinctive. Where a single film has one Todorov arc, a long-form drama sustains multiple, interweaving narrative strands across episodes and seasons, with disruptions and partial resolutions layered over a long-range arc. Todorov's structure still applies - within episodes and across the whole - but the form multiplies and complicates it, using cliffhangers, flashbacks and ensemble strands. Analysing this serial narrative complexity, and the way it hooks and sustains an audience, is central to the media-language study.

Genre is equally central, and long-form television is marked by hybridity - the mixing of genres (crime with social realism, science fiction with drama, period with thriller). Neale's account of repetition and difference is especially productive here: complex television repeats recognisable genre conventions while varying and combining them, and the hybridity is itself a form of the 'difference' that keeps the genre fresh and signals sophistication. Identifying the genres in play and how they are combined is a key analytical move.

Structuralist and semiotic tools deepen the analysis. Long-form dramas are frequently organised around binary oppositions (order/chaos, loyalty/betrayal, individual/institution) that Levi-Strauss's approach exposes, and their dense visual style rewards Barthesian decoding of symbolic codes and myths. Where a drama is knowingly intertextual or stylised, Baudrillard's postmodern concepts may apply. The media-language study thus draws on the full set of language theories.

For analysis, the media language of long-form television should be read for how its codes, narrative and genre construct meaning and position the audience, with the relevant theories applied to specific, evidenced features. Because television is an in-depth form, this language analysis must also connect to representation (the codes construct representations), industry (the 'quality' aesthetic signals a prestige industrial strategy) and audience (the complex narrative rewards attentive, engaged viewing) - the synoptic reach the extended responses demand.

Worked example

Analysing serial narrative and hybridity

Analyse the narrative and genre of a long-form crime drama.

Serial narrative
Multiple strands (the case, the detective's personal arc, an institutional thread) interweave across episodes, each with its own disruptions and partial resolutions (Todorov, multiplied).
Genre hybridity
It hybridises crime with social realism or psychological drama, repeating crime conventions while varying them (Neale).
Deep structure and codes
Binary oppositions (justice/corruption) organise it (Levi-Strauss); a bleak visual style connotes moral ambiguity (Barthes).
Connect
The complex, hybrid, 'quality' language signals a prestige industrial strategy and rewards engaged, attentive audiences.

Result: The analysis reads serial narrative and hybridity with Todorov, Neale and Levi-Strauss and connects the 'quality' language to industry and audience - a full in-depth media-language reading.

Typical mistakes

Analysing television narrative as a single simple arc, missing the multi-strand, serial complexity of long-form drama.
Decoding codes in isolation without connecting them to genre, representation and the 'quality' industrial signal.

Active revision

Analyse how media language (narrative and genre especially) constructs meaning in a long-form television product.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Media Studies (7572) specification (AQA)

Representation in television#

StandardAQA 7572/2 TelevisionDfE GCE Media Studies subject content

Representation in television

Fig. 3Television's codes construct value-laden representations, shaped by industrial context and completed by audience decoding.

Television's length and reach make it a powerful site of representation: over many hours it constructs detailed, developing representations of social groups, identities, places and values, and its wide audience gives these representations social weight. Analysis asks how a television CSP represents gender, ethnicity, class, age, sexuality, region and nation, how those representations are constructed through media language, and what values and ideologies they encode - applying Hall on stereotyping and power as the base theory.

The representation theories apply richly to television. van Zoonen and Butler illuminate its constructions and performances of gender; Gilroy its representations of race, ethnicity and nation (especially pertinent where the CSP is transnational or engages colonial legacies); Gauntlett the identities and role models it offers audiences as resources. Long-form drama in particular can construct complex, developing characters that both draw on and complicate stereotypes, so the analysis must weigh reinforcement against challenge rather than settling for 'positive' or 'negative' labels.

Television's transnational, global-age context makes representation especially interesting, because CSPs from different national contexts represent groups and values differently, and products that travel across markets carry their representations into new contexts where they may be read differently. Comparing how two television CSPs from different contexts represent, say, gender or national identity is a characteristic in-depth task, and it foregrounds how social and cultural context shapes representation (connecting to the contexts topic).

Representation in television connects tightly to the other framework areas. The representations are built from the media language analysed in the previous section; they are shaped by industrial conditions (what a public-service remit, a commercial imperative or a global market permits and encourages); and their effect depends on how audiences decode them (Hall's readings) - a stereotype in a drama 'works' only if audiences accept it. Tracing these connections is the synoptic move the in-depth study rewards.

For analysis, television representation should be read as constructed, value-laden and consequential, with the relevant theories applied to specific characters, storylines and codes, and with attention to change, context and audience reading. Because television is an in-depth form, the representation analysis should be developed and evaluative - judging how far the CSP reinforces or challenges dominant values - and connected across the framework, exactly as the extended-response questions require.

Worked example

Comparing representations across contexts

Compare how two television CSPs from different national contexts represent national identity.

Establish each representation
Analyse the codes constructing national identity in each product, with evidence.
Apply theory
Apply Gilroy (nation, belonging, colonial legacy) and Hall (whose values the representation serves) to each.
Compare and contextualise
Draw out how each product's national and cultural context shapes its distinctive representation.
Evaluate and judge
Weigh how far each reinforces or complicates national myths, and consider how audiences in different markets might read them.

Result: The comparison analyses and evaluates representations across contexts with Gilroy and Hall - the transnational, synoptic representation task the in-depth study sets.

Typical mistakes

Labelling television representations 'positive' or 'negative' rather than analysing their construction, values and reception.
Ignoring the transnational context that makes television representations travel and read differently across markets.

Active revision

Analyse how a television product represents a social group, applying and evaluating a representation theory.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for media studies (Department for Education)

The television industry#

AdvancedAQA 7572/2 TelevisionDfE GCE Media Studies subject content

Broadcast versus streaming television

Fig. 4The industrial spectrum: public-service broadcast television and global streaming platforms differ in funding, distribution and regulation.

The television industry spans a spectrum of funding and ownership models, and understanding where a CSP sits on it is essential. At one pole is public-service broadcasting (in the UK, above all the BBC, licence-fee funded under a Royal Charter with obligations of range, quality and universality); in the middle, commercial free-to-air broadcasting funded by advertising; and, increasingly dominant, global subscription and streaming platforms funded by subscription and driven by scale, data and global rights. Each model shapes what television is made and how.

The global-age transformation of the industry is the key industrial story. Powerful transnational streaming platforms commission and distribute long-form 'quality' drama for a global subscriber base, using data-driven commissioning and binge release, and putting pressure on national public-service broadcasters and traditional schedules. This concentration of power in a few global platforms is a textbook case for Curran and Seaton (concentration and its effects) and for Hesmondhalgh (risk management through 'quality' formatting, franchising and integration, now at global scale).

Regulation of television is caught in exactly the tension Livingstone and Lunt describe. National regulators (Ofcom in the UK) uphold citizen-interest standards for broadcast television, but global streaming platforms, delivering across borders and outside traditional broadcast definitions, strain this nationally based, citizen-protecting model - the convergence and global-corporation pressures Livingstone and Lunt identify. The future of public-service television and the regulation of global platforms are live debates a television CSP can illuminate.

These industrial conditions shape the product directly. A public-service CSP will bear the marks of its remit (range, a certain kind of representation, a universal address); a global-platform CSP will bear the marks of its industrial ambition (high production values, genre hybridity designed to travel, an international address). The 'quality' aesthetic analysed in the media-language section is itself an industrial strategy - a way of signalling prestige and justifying subscription - so industry and language are tightly linked.

For analysis, the television industry should be read for how funding, ownership, distribution and regulation shape the CSP, with the industry theories applied and evaluated and connected to the other areas. Because television is an in-depth form, the industry analysis should be developed and synoptic - explaining the product's form, representations and audience address through its industrial conditions - and should engage the global-age transformation that is reshaping the whole form.

Worked example

Industry analysis of a streaming drama

Analyse how the streaming-platform industry shapes a long-form drama CSP.

Funding and ownership
A global subscription platform funds it for a worldwide subscriber base, seeking prestige and reach.
Apply the theories
Hesmondhalgh: 'quality' formatting and global integration manage risk; Curran and Seaton: concentration of power in a few platforms; Livingstone and Lunt: it evades national broadcast regulation.
Shape of the product
The industrial ambition explains the drama's high values, hybridity and international address.
Evaluate and connect
Weigh the platform's creative investment against concerns about concentration and the erosion of public-service television.

Result: The analysis explains the drama's form through its streaming-industry conditions with all three industry theories - the in-depth, synoptic industry reading the study requires.

Typical mistakes

Treating all television as commercial or all as public-service, missing the spectrum and the streaming transformation.
Describing the industry without explaining how it shapes the CSP's form, representations and address.

Active revision

Analyse how the funding and regulation of a television product shape its form and content, applying the industry theories.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Media Studies (7572) specification (AQA)

Television audiences#

StandardAQA 7572/2 TelevisionDfE GCE Media Studies subject content

Television audiences in the on-demand age

Fig. 5Television targets an audience who receive it through dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings and increasingly participate around it.

Television audiences have been transformed by the global, on-demand age, and the CSP study must engage both traditional and contemporary audience behaviour. The old model of the scheduled, mass, simultaneous broadcast audience - gathered at a fixed time for a shared national event - has been supplemented (not wholly replaced) by the on-demand, personalised, global streaming audience, who watch what they choose when they choose, often 'binge' whole seasons, and are tracked by platform data. This shift reshapes how television targets and reaches audiences.

Targeting and address still matter. A television CSP is designed for a target audience, and its genre, scheduling or platform placement, and mode of address hail that audience; long-form 'quality' drama often targets an engaged, attentive, sometimes upmarket audience willing to follow complex narratives. The uses and gratifications model applies well - television offers diversion, personal identity, social interaction (the 'water-cooler' or online conversation around a show) and a kind of surveillance/information about worlds - and helps explain the appeal of a CSP.

Reception is central, and Hall's readings apply with full force to television's representations and messages. Different audiences decode a drama's representations and values as dominant, negotiated or oppositional readings, from their own social positions, so the meaning of a television CSP is completed - and contested - at reception. For transnational CSPs, audiences in different national and cultural contexts may decode very differently, a rich application of reception theory in the global-age study.

Fandom and participation are increasingly important to television audiences. Long-form drama in particular generates active fan cultures - online discussion, theorising, recaps, fan works, memes - that Jenkins's participatory-culture theory captures, and the audience's collective activity around a show has become part of its cultural life and its marketing. Shirky's end-of-audience theory applies too, as viewers become producers of talk and content around the drama. Television audiences are thus a strong case for the participatory theories.

For analysis, television audiences should be read for how the CSP targets and addresses them, how different audiences receive and use it (Hall, uses and gratifications), and how they participate around it (Jenkins, Shirky), with attention to the global-age shift from scheduled mass audience to on-demand global participation. Because television is an in-depth form, the audience analysis should connect back to language, representation and industry - completing the synoptic reading the extended responses demand.

Worked example

Audience analysis of a binge-released drama

Analyse the audience of a long-form drama released for on-demand binge viewing.

Targeting and gratifications
It targets an engaged audience willing to follow complexity, offering diversion, identity and social 'water-cooler' talk (uses and gratifications).
Reception
Audiences decode its representations and values variously (Hall), and audiences in different countries may read it differently.
Participation
It generates online discussion, theorising and fan works (Jenkins), with viewers producing content around it (Shirky).
Global-age shift
The on-demand, binge model and global data-tracked audience mark the shift from the scheduled mass audience.

Result: The analysis covers targeting, reception and participation in the on-demand, global context - the full in-depth audience reading, connected to the wider framework.

Typical mistakes

Assuming television audiences are the passive mass audience of the broadcast era and ignoring on-demand, participatory behaviour.
Analysing targeting only and neglecting reception (Hall's readings) and participation.

Active revision

Analyse how a television product targets its audience and how different audiences might receive and participate around it.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for media studies (Department for Education)

Worked comparative television analysis#

AdvancedAQA 7572/2 TelevisionDfE GCE Media Studies subject content

Comparative television analysis by framework area

Fig. 6A comparative television analysis runs both products through each framework area with theory and context, into a judged, synoptic reading.

The in-depth television study culminates in synoptic, often comparative, extended responses that run the whole framework across the set product(s) and evaluate the theories, and the worked example below models this on a representative comparison. Because the set products change with each specification cycle, the method matters more than any specific example: run the framework across each product, compare systematically, apply and evaluate the theories, integrate context, and reach a judgement.

A comparative television answer is structured by framework area, not by product. Rather than describing product A in full and then product B, the strong answer takes each area - media language, representation, industry, audience - and compares the two products within it, drawing out the significance of similarities and differences and relating them to context. This keeps the comparison genuinely comparative and lets the two products illuminate each other, which is the point of pairing them.

Theory and evaluation run throughout. Each framework area brings its theories (Todorov and Neale for language, Hall and Gilroy for representation, Curran and Seaton and Hesmondhalgh for industry, Hall and Jenkins for audience), applied to specific evidence in each product and evaluated - how well each theory fits, what it illuminates, where a product complicates it. The comparison often sharpens evaluation, because the two products test a theory against different cases.

Context and connection are essential to the synoptic reach the top bands require. The products' contexts (national, cultural, historical, industrial) should explain their differences, and the framework areas should be connected within and across the products (a representation traced to an industrial condition, an audience reading tested against an encoded meaning). The global-age framing gives the comparison its throughline: how the same transformed context produces these two different products.

The worked example below models a comparative television analysis structured by framework area, with theory, evaluation, context and a judgement. It is the template for the in-depth television extended responses, and it demonstrates the whole point of studying television in depth: two long-form products, known across the framework with their theories and contexts, can be compared with a precision, evaluative depth and synoptic reach that reveal how contemporary television makes meaning, represents the world, operates as an industry and engages its global audience.

Worked example

Comparative television essay plan

Plan a synoptic comparison of two long-form television products from different contexts. (Apply to your own current CSPs.)

Media language
Compare narrative complexity and genre hybridity (Todorov, Neale), noting how each product's style reflects its context.
Representation
Compare their representations of a group or of national identity (Hall, Gilroy), evaluating reinforcement versus challenge.
Industry
Compare their funding, distribution and regulation (public-service vs global platform; Curran and Seaton, Hesmondhalgh, Livingstone and Lunt).
Audience and judgement
Compare targeting, reception and participation (Hall, Jenkins), integrate context, and judge what the comparison reveals about television in the global age.

Result: A framework-structured comparative plan with theory, evaluation, context and a judgement - the model in-depth television extended response, to apply to any current CSP pair.

Typical mistakes

Describing one television product fully and then the other, with no genuine area-by-area comparison.
Covering only one or two framework areas in an in-depth answer that requires synoptic breadth.

Active revision

Plan a comparative, synoptic essay on two television products across the framework, with theory, context and a judgement.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Media Studies (7572) specification (AQA)

References & sources

Sources

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for media studies

AQA

AQA AS and A-level Media Studies (7572) specification

Television in the Global Age

6 sections~20 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 3 · Advanced 2

Television in the Global Age

Key points

Context shaping a long-form drama

Key points

Analysing serial narrative and hybridity

Key points

Comparing representations across contexts

Key points

Industry analysis of a streaming drama

Key points

Audience analysis of a binge-released drama

Key points

Comparative television essay plan

Sources

Television in the Global Age

Key points

Context shaping a long-form drama

Key points

Analysing serial narrative and hybridity

Key points

Comparing representations across contexts

Key points

Industry analysis of a streaming drama

Key points

Audience analysis of a binge-released drama

Key points

Comparative television essay plan

Sources