Mandatory-jokey political TV actively deters the politically engaged audience

Evidence

If you were designing a programme specifically to put people — especially young people — off politics, to convince them it is a tedious waste of time, then you could hardly do better than This Week. The programme seems to be aimed at literally no one: if you are staying up late to watch a programme devoted to politics, then presumably you are pretty serious about politics. Who wants this unfunny froth? — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 739

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The BBC’s political coverage encodes unspoken rules suppressing political seriousness — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 738; British TV’s tone of light mockery signals and sustains political disengagement — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 737; TV drama political stances are diluted by the pursuit of the widest audience — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race…, 318 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Mass media’s audience demands undermines their own ideological work #corroborates (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 55
• Broadcast professionalism functions as a defensive retreat from contested content #expands (0.85) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 872
• Electoral politics is the only terrain television grants legitimacy as political #qualifies (0.82) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 864
• TV drama political stances are diluted by the pursuit of the widest audience #expands (0.80) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 318
• TV talk shows deliberately engineer an illusion of intimacy with audiences #expands (0.78) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 774
• Streaming’s flagship shows blur genre to dissolve politics into tone #qualifies (0.72) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 234
• Impartial broadcast form recruits viewers into a false neutrality toward class conflict #complicates (0.70)