Articulo_4_EN_Doxa_28

They leave a reiterative hallmark on their entire audiovisual work (Cuevas, 1994; Sanderson, 2005; Pellejero, 2012; Chaudhuri, 2013; Galindo-Pérez, 2015).

In the contemporary era, it is essential to touch upon this paradigm in the television industry, highlighting the increase and popularity of TV series production, which has focused critics and journalists’ attention on this media (Schatz, 2014; Perren and Schatz, 2015).

Therefore, several studies allocate television authorship to the executive-creative producer and assess the consideration of the showrunner as auteur (Newman and Levine, 2012; Blakey, 2017). With this in mind, Kompare (2011: 99-101) identifies three related notions: television production is understood as a collaborative process, television authorship constitutes a brand that allows television channels to compete within the global market thanks to their signature TV series, and this phenomenon contributes to the formation of so-called ‘cult’ audiences, as well as an increased interest in the media field.

To understand the notion of the author in television media, we should consider his/her activity in an economic and culturally specific context (Mittell, 2015; Blakey, 2017), noting the complex communication system that the collaborative production process involves. It makes it difficult to discern who the audiovisual author is (Cantor, 1988; Thompson and Burns, 1990; Kubey, 2009; Mann, 2009). Despite this, Hills (2013: 201) proclaims that ‘far from receding as a topic of academic and audience interest, authorship has become an increasingly important factor for the TV industry, with a US-style “showrunner” model being adopted.’

We can emphasize prior research, such as Newcomb and Alley’s book (1983) –The Producer´s Medium– which already assigned the creative control of television to the executive producer. They asserted that this audiovisual profile has a personal vision and a skill set for guiding the different professionals’ ideas, which are crucial to the project’s result. Moreover, in the twenty-first century the cited notions are stressed due to the popularity acquired by the showrunner, who, according to Newman and Levine (2012: 38), ‘is potentially an auteur, an artist of unique vision whose experiences and personality are expressed through storytelling craft, and whose presence in cultural discourses functions to produce authority for the forms with which he is identified.’

2. Objectives and Methodology

The main objective of this paper is to analyze and offer a historical and documental review of the authorship in American television media, through the application of the ideas stemming from the Politique des Auteur. With this goal in mind, we have utilized a qualitative methodology to examine a specialized bibliography on both contexts: from papers published in the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma to texts that assess the attribution of television authorship to the showrunner in the contemporary era.

Therefore, this article has been divided into three parts in order to develop the proposed research. Firstly, as a basic premise, we should emphasize that audiovisual production is a collaborative process. To address this matter, we have referred to the work of Scott (1975), Sanderson (2005), and Chaudhuri (2013). Specifically, in the context of television,