Balancing Audience’s Needs and Producer’s Expectations in Television Serial Drama Programming

The study sheds light on how the TV station executives balance the entertainment needs of its audience and the producers' expectations within a changing digital broadcast environment. The study is anchored on uses, gratification, and the encoding and decoding theories. The research employs a mixed-method design approach by using survey questionnaires (415), FGDs and in-depth interviews with 5 TV station executives in Kenya and serial drama fiction producers’. The results indicate that the station executive takes centre stage to fulfil the urban audience needs and the producers’ needs respectively. The station executives’ contextualize the viewers and the serial drama producers as ‘profit vessels’ and any decision made towards them should culminate in economic benefit to the station. The study recommends bridging the relationship between the station executives and the serial drama producers, making the former play an advisory and consulting role in the productions.