1. Home
  2. NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities
  3. Bachelor in Communication Sciences
  4. Optional Area of Journalism
  5. Television Genres

Television Genres

Objectives

a) Decoding the basic principles of audiovisual language.
b) Mastering the concepts of programme and television genre.
c) Understanding the set of narrative strategies and coordinates which determine the composition of the different television genres.
d) Adopting a critical view on programming strategies and mastering the set of conceptual tools which contribute to the innovation of modern television discourse.
e) Analysing and discussing examples of different modern television genres, from advertisements to reality-shows, from news to soaps, from documentaries to TV movies.

General characterization

Code

01101853

Credits

6.0

Responsible teacher

Pedro Miguel Ferreira Florêncio

Hours

Weekly - 4

Total - 168

Teaching language

Portuguese

Prerequisites

None

Bibliography

ALVAREZ, L (1985). Poétique du Direct Télévisuel. Louvain-la-Neuve, Ciaco Éditeur
CÁDIMA, F. R. (1996). O fenómeno televisivo . Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores
JOST, F. (1997) - La promesse des genres, revue Réseaux, pp 13-31.
BRANDÃO, Nuno Goulart, (2006) Prime time: do que falam as notícias dos telejornais. Cruz Quebrada: Casa das Letras 2006.
SHAEFFER, J-M (1986). Théorie des Genres, Paris: Seuil.

Teaching method

Oral exposition of the syllabus (70%), supported by critical reading of excerpts from the bibliography. Video projection of film excerpts, television programmes, advertisements, video clips, photographs, paintings, magazines and newspapers.

Evaluation method

Available soon

Subject matter

After presentation and discussion of these programme composition laws we proceed to a specific and detailed analysis of major modern television genres:
3.1 - Informative (live broadcasts, news, debates, interviews, reportage, magazines, etc.);
3.2 - Ficcional (soaps, TV movies, etc.)
3.3 - Hybrid ( reality-show, talk-show, advertisements, etc.).
The purpose is not to make a mere inventory or to organise cataloguing grids for each television genre. The pair news/soap has been ruling over Portuguese television’s primetime for decades. Therefore the purpose is primarily to understand which are the strategies aimed at regulating the subjects’/spectators’ television experiences.