Television as Film, Film as Television: Broadcasting Cinema in the 1990s

Abstract

By the end of the 1980s, single fictions on television were generally called ‘films’ rather than ‘plays’. Channel 4’s drama policy helped bring about a discursive, conceptual and presentational shift in the way in which single television dramas were conceived. In the 1990s, with a change in Commissioning Editor and a change of job title to ‘Head of Film’, came a change in direction for Channel 4. Whereas previously Film(s) on Four were intended for cinema distribution internationally (and, in some cases, a small-scale domestic distribution), after 1990 Channel 4 films were explicitly destined for theatrical distribution in the UK as well. John Caughie has described the changes occurring in the early 1990s as manifestations of various logics of convergence between British television drama and film. He summarizes them thus:

The £6 million budget to produce twenty films a year becomes £12 million to produce around fifteen. Costs go up and volume comes down; the need to fill a programming strand is replaced by the need to ensure that each product has the quality which will enable it to find its place in the market.¹