Handmaidens of consolidation in the UK television production sector

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses the role of intermediaries in the evolution of the UK TV production sector tracking the processes which in the past two decades have underpinned consolidation in the UK TV production sector. The research involved elite interviews with executives at ten UK Independent production companies and two financial intermediaries as well as trade bodies and civil servants. The epistemic work of intermediaries shape transactions in a way that aligned with the buyers’ desire to grow their portfolio of companies by establishing the fitness of companies for acquisition. Through classification, clustering and sorting, they confirm the notion (Knorr Cetina and Preda 2001, 30–31) that knowledge can be treated as a commodity – ‘a more or less valid representation of the world which is “inscribed in and constitutive of economic objects as relevant to the practical activities of economic agents” and purposefully assembled.