Following from the deep restructurings of the television landscape in Europe, with the demise of the public service hegemony towards the end of the twentieth century, and the succeding growth of commercial entrepreneurs in the field of television production and distribution, new formats and programme genres have emerged (Ellis 2000). In the restructuring process there has been an increased approximation between the various national television companies, irrespective of being public service, commercial or hybrid (cf. Syvertsen 1996), as they have been drawn into similar production practices, subsumed under the same production logic. Many of the new formats are produced with the quality of ‘liveness’ as a main component – talk shows, game shows, charity events, sports broadcasts, etc. Consequently, live television programming will be at the center of analysis in this project.

The project aims at studying the practices of television production in relation to the texts produced in Sweden and Estonia. Theoretically it draws on previous research on the restructuring of the Nordic television landscape (Søndergaard 1994, Syvertsen 1997, Bakøy & Syvertsen 2001), combined with a focus on textual production (Helland 1995, Ytreberg 1999). To the contrary of much previous research, however, this project will involve the analysis of both entertainment and factual genres.