Dumbing Down as Content Portfolio Strategy

Bachelorarbeit von Resulhan Öztimur

Introduction:

‘I listened to the entire festivity and I was appalled. There were small television excerpts being offered with some clowns, some nonsense, idiocy, filth, complete filth. This is what is being broadcasted in Germany each day. The directors say that the audience wishes so, as if the audience was a crowd of idiots.’ On October 11th, 2008, German literature critic Marcel Reich Ranicki rejected the German Television Prize honouring him for his lifetime achievement. In front of rolling cameras, Ranicki made his standpoint very clear that he finds the current television landscape rubbish and dull. His words are the result of 25 years of private televisual content development in Germany. Today’s media environment has changed drastically. Each day we find more and more TV programmes which are designed for an audience that demands no intellectual work and wants to be entertained. This matter of entertainment has exclusively formed the television networks’ programming strategies concerning their content. Consequently, the offer of daily soaps (‘GZSZ’), reality TV (‘Big Brother’, ‘Dschungelcamp’) and game/casting shows (‘Deutschland sucht den Superstar”) has risen, while the offer of classical formats such as fiction film, documentaries and sophisticated programmes (‘Das literarische Quartett’) has decreased.

Problem Formulation:

Since the establishment of private broadcasting in 1984, the television offering in Germany has not only changed quantitatively but also qualitatively. Today, we have a range of more than 50 German private TV broadcasters with an enormous variety of programmes. In recent years, we have been experiencing a downward trend of content quality, which is defined as ‘dumbing down’. The problem arises that in the battle for ratings, intellectual demand fades into the background of sole entertainment. This approach has evolved into the main content portfolio strategy of private television. But is it only the private broadcasters’ blame or are ARD and ZDF also striving for audience ratings in their programming methods? Is television in fact dumbing the culture down or is it making it smarter? Which side triggered the effect of ‘dumbing down’ – the media or the audience? These questions still remain unanswered. Therefore, this paper intends to analyse the matter of ‘dumbing down’ as well as the interrelated content portfolio strategy.

Table of Contents:

Text Sample:

Chapter 5, ‘Dumbing Down’:

This chapter will deal with the topic of ‘dumbing down’. First, defining attributes will be assigned to the term in order to analyse its deeper meaning. After having completed the characterisation of ‘dumbing down’, it will be categorised into two types of focus points: process and product. These categories will place the term within the context of media management conducting a programme health check.

Attributes:

In order to ascribe appropriate attributes to the term ‘dumbing down’ it is important to understand its meaning in general in order to draw a worst-case scenario displaying its collateral effects. As the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines ‘dumbing down’, it is the method of facilitating content so as to gain popularity. Hence in this context, it infers a strategic approach at the society of a culture that assumably lacks a certain level of intellect. It can be further deduced that the majority of the society is affected by this decline of intelligence. As a consequence, the producers of products and services, such as TV programmes, proceed on the assumption that simplistic things are demanded from the consumers, respectively the mainstream. The result is a supply of ‘dumbed down’ products developed for a ‘dumbed down’ culture. This scenario is a straightforward deduction of the definition. Thus, it allows the allocation of attributes to the term ‘dumbing down’.

In the following, a list of attributes will be assigned to ‘dumbing down’ in order to explain the term in a continued sense. The definitions are retrieved from the ‘Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary’.

Banal: ‘boring, ordinary and not original’.

Credulous: ‘too willing to believe what you are told; easily deceived’.

Dumb: ‘stupid and annoying’.

Infantile: ‘typical of a child and therefore unsuitable for an adult’.

Lowbrow: ‘(of entertainment) not complicated or demanding much intelligence to be understood’.

Mindless: ‘1 stupid and meaningless; 2 not needing much mental effort’.

Furthermore, ‘dumbing down’ includes the decline of literature and intellect, a media-directed culture, the unimportance of education, sensationalism, the fall of tradition and family, the decline of institutional values, the consumption without objection, public sexuality, and also the focus on quantity instead of quality.

‘Dumbing Down’ as Process and Product:

In order to form a relevance to media management, ‘dumbing down’ will be analysed within the context of the two categories process and product.

‘Dumbing Down’ as a Process:

In the process of ‘dumbing down’, the first step is the recognition or the assumption that people demand less intellectual content from the television programmes. Once the ideas for existing and possible programme formats are gathered, it is being decided upon the least objectionable programming (LOP). Paul Klein, who was the programming head of NBC in the years 1960, explained his LOP theory as follows. ‘All a show has to be is least objectionable among a segment of the audience. When you put on a show, (…) you get your 32-share. That’s about [a third] of the network audience, and the other networks get their 32 shares. Then we can add to that by our competitors’ failure – they become objectionable so people turn to us if we’re less objectionable. (…) Melodrama’s good, (…) a little tear here and there, a little morality tale, that’s good. (…) That’s least objectionable. It’s my job to keep my 32, not to cause any tune-out a priori in terms of ads or concepts, to make sure there’s no tune-out in the shows vis-à-vis the competition”. This programming approach becomes apparent in the product portfolio of various television networks.

‘Dumbing Down’ as a Product:

The result of the process of ‘dumbing down’ is the product, respectively the programmes. The attributes that were assigned to the term ‘dumbing down’ in chapter 5.1 can be used in a health check to identify television programmes as ‘dumbing down’. In the following, one programme (that seems adequate in this context) from each of the main networks in Germany (ARD, ZDF, RTL, Sat.1 and ProSieben) will be presented and evaluated. Thereby, a perception of unsophisticated programmes will be established.

‘Verbotene Liebe” on ARD is a soap opera targeted at a young audience. The main concept of the soap is a forbidden love between two twin siblings who were separated after birth but later coincidentally meet again. The show continued evolving around this main thread introducing several ‘forbidden love’ affairs and currently there exist approximately more than 3400 episodes. Among others, the topics and contents can be classified with attributes such as banal, lowbrow, mindless, unimportance of education, public sexuality, the fall of traditional values and the focus on quantity instead of quality.

‘Wetten, dass ?” on ZDF is a show that has been successful for more than two decades. Since 1987, Thomas Gottschalk has been presenting the programme. The concept is about ordinary people who have a talent of doing something special. They bet that they can perform their extraordinary talent and celebrities on the show stake their bet or counter bet. In the end, the viewers vote for their act of choice in order to determine a ‘Wettkönig” [bet king]. The show is decorated with entertainment performances and celebrities. It is also known for engaging in the stunting strategy extending the show in the last minute. Attributes that match this programme are lowbrow, mindless, media-directed culture and sensationalism.

‘Ich bin ein Star – Holt mich hier raus!” (also called ‘Dschungelcamp’) on RTL is a reality show that has been produced since 2004. The programme involves ten people, mostly outdated celebrities, who move to the jungle for approximately two weeks. In the course of their stay, the inhabitants are required to pass various tests of courage which are usually associated with disgust. The viewers vote for the persons to leave the camp so as to elect one final ‘Dschungelkönig” [jungle king]. This show can be categorized into dumb, infantile, mindless, decline of literature and intellect, unimportance of education, sensationalism, public sexuality and the consumption without objection.

‘Richterin Barbara Salesch” on Sat.1 is a show that is set in a court (also called court show). The concept is about staged cases of jurisdiction and their resolution by a judge. To date, there are more than 1700 episodes of the show. The topics include (among others) murder, rape, theft, and fraud. The attributes of ‘dumbing down’ that correspond to this programme are banal, credulous, dumb, sensationalism, consumption without objection and the focus on quantity instead of quality.

‘We are Family!” on ProSieben is a reality programme that has features of a documentary as well as of a soap (also called docu-soap). In this show, a camera team follows German families in their everyday lives. This programme can be classified with following attributes: banal, dumb, lowbrow, mindless, decline of literature and intellect, media-directed culture, unimportance of education, fall of family and traditional values and the consumption without objection.

As an interim result, ‘dumbing down’ is a cross-genre phenomenon in the current German television landscape. Not only do both private and public broadcasters provide lowbrow entertainment, but the matter of ‘dumbing down’ can be found in various genres reaching from documentaries over court and reality shows to soap operas.