The changing production culture of television satire

This article argues for a genre approach in the analysis of changing production cultures. It supports the fruitfulness of this approach using results from a study of satirical sketch comedy production in Danish public service television. The article outlines the paradigmatic changes to the production practices of satire in the period from 1999 to 2009, during which the competition in the Danish television system intensified. On the basis of these results, the article discusses an emerging production culture of ‘auteur-like’ entertainment suited to new media platforms used by the public service media, and driven by media-referential comedy. This production culture developed alongside a production culture of entertainment focused on versioning international television formats. This development indicates that multiple and relatively autonomous production cultures coexist within a larger television entertainment production system with very different consequences for the entertainment output at large.