Summary Of Toward A Paradigm By Elana Levine

In Elana Levine’s essay titled Toward a Paradigm for Media Production Research: Behind the Scenes at “General Hospital,” the author discourses five factors that influenced the soap opera. The five categories are production constraints, the production environment, production routines and practices, the production of characters and stories, and the role of audience in production. When talking about the production constraints, the essay talks about economic, which covers who paid for the show—ABC. The cultural implications is that ABC, because it owned and produced the show, had its hands in every aspect of the production, and because of this, things like sex scenes are guns being held to characters head wasn’t able to be shown. In addition, because of the show’s historical ratings, the show was once a cash show but now is struggling to gain new audiences to justify higher budgets. The shows influence over designer clothing then has waned over time.

In this section, the author discusses the social environment surrounded the show and the show’s organizational hierarchy. A lot is discussed in this section but the author makes mention that during one of the visits to the set, the author saw how the writing staff was attempting a complex renegotiation of hiring a former head writer. During this time, the author found that the writers were mostly unaware of how the show is received by others within the hierarchy. This is one example, but, overall, the production team was often separated from the rest of the cast, including actors. The author then makes the point that to understand how the show is produced impacts the resulting program when