Writing for Everyone

Abstract

Drawing on the example of a French soap opera, PBLV, this article demonstrates how television screenwriters integrate audience constraints into the production of fiction. Writers take into account viewing statistics, although the main concern for audience numbers lies with the producer and the TV channel. Although they are themselves highly educated and in intellectual professions, they tend to consider their audience as being largely working class. This representation underlies the rules of screenwriting they apply, which aim to attract and captivate an audience that is often considered inattentive. It also supposes a belief in the effects of television itself and its power of addiction. Yet the representation is not based on either a precise knowledge of the audience, nor on the writers’ own television viewing habits. The attitudes screenwriters have towards their public is in fact defined by the social distance that separates them. This representation informs the way they valorize their work by imbibing the soap opera with pedagogic objectives.