What Makes TV Quality TV? That's A Hard One, To Say The Least.

(Ironically, one of the few ads I could find on YouTube for the famous HBO ad/slogan was at a low video quality)

This was written for the university subject, BCM289.

To start off with, we should probably do what is typical in discussions like these and that's defining what is Quality TV? Well, one of the key issues that arises from this is 'How do you define quality in the first place?' It's to the point that "Even before a definition can be made, almost any discussion involving quality cannot escape issues of value judgement and personal taste..." (McCabe & Akass, 2007, p. 2). So, let's first discuss a few possible examples of what defines quality.

First, you can determine it by critical success, the amount of praise that a show has received on average. This success can be taken from traditional review sources like television critics and/or from 'audience consensus' results in a survey or poll. Of course, these results are skewed by personal taste and what a reviewer or audience member values most in a certain show or format. You can also potentially go further and order reviews by the length, depth and strength of the argument being presented. But again, this brings up another issue: that being, 'Who is establishing the criteria being determined and for what reason?' "what are the criteria used to define quality – taste, personal judgement, commercial success, industrial conditions, aesthetic values, product differentiation?" (McCabe & Akass, 2007, p. 2) At the end of the day, there's always going to be questions of who is determining what in a system like this. I personally think it's achievable to find a similar system that is agreeable to all parties involved, but let's put this particular idea to bed for now and formulate and theorise another method.

A different but not too dissimilar approach could be that quality TV is determined by the subject matter and content being presented. Let's say, for example, that a show that tackles serious topics and has been very carefully crafted is going to be seen by people as of a higher quality compared to a reality cooking show with a quick turnaround on production time. Again, this falls into traps like 'Why are serious topics superior to lighter topics?', 'Does production time determine quality?' and at 'What point does something become carefully crafted?'

Yes, these questions and problems are, indeed, influenced by personal bias and opinion. Do I think they always are? Again, no, because I think it's possible to establish and rank the quality of a program compared to another, just in the same way you can rank the quality of opinion ('How 'true' is the opinion?' 'Does it have a lot of thought behind it?' 'Is the opinion educated and well-researched?' and so on).

And I also don't think it's a dead-end topic where there are no answers, or 'true' answers. I'm sure there's something to be found here beyond subjectivity. It's just a matter of how much I or someone else is willing to dig.

References:

McCabe, J & Akass, K (eds) 2007, Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond, I.B. Tauris, London, United Kingdom.