Case Study TV Programme | Glee

Glee is a successful US TV Drama hybrid with the genres of Comedy and Musical. It was first broadcast in 2009 by mainstream network, Fox Television and currently in its 4 series, showing critical and commercial success. The narrative involves aspirational recording artists and performers who have enrolled in Glee Club at the fictional William McKinley High School in Ohio. Glee Club is at the bottom of the social network in this particular school - everyone is accepted within the club but outside the club they are confined. Characters are diverse and come from a range of minority groups and ethnic backgrounds with stories sometimes stand alone in a series format with narrative arcs while other episodes are open ended.

Genre
Glee is a typical TV Drama in that it has a dramatic story line  more so than UK produced dramas and is fast paced, focusing on characters. Narrative arcs links the series which is a key convention and each episode is character driven ensuring audience identification - the nature of an ensemble cast is very common to TV Drama, particularly American produced which also is a signifies of high production values. As a general rule, TV Dramas are encoded with high production values which included expensive set design and lighting,elaborate costume and makeup, multi-camera technology, some star marketing, 60 minute to 90 minute scheduled episodes and often broadcast on major networks and channels. Glee very much falls into each of these categories, particularly being shot at Pinewood and broadcast on premium channel Sky 1. Like many TV Dramas Glee is scheduled either prime time at 8pm or 9pm, only just post watershed dependent on story-line again demonstrating high production values. The program has a mass, mainstream target audience and has achieved critical and commercial success, although Glee has a female based audience the characters used in the program are very 'real' with over the top cultural stereotypes - a common convention of TV Drama to ensure the audience are familiar with the character and the role they have within the narrative. 
As Glee is a hybrid with Musicals, it has the key conventions such as actors breaking into a song to punctuate the narrative and the choice of the songs themselves are responsible for moving the story-line along through a display. The musical works well within the frame of this program with a 3 act narrative structure in each episode where a character  problem and setting are introduced in Act 1, the main developmental points are explored in Act 2 with, more often than not, some form of narrative closure in Act 3.

Representation
Representation in Glee often has dominant and oppositional readings - a dominant reading would suggest that Glee positively discriminates by the very nature of the narrative surrounding characters from a diverse range of background who are 'side-lined' from the rest of the school. The cast demonstrates a variety of cultures such as Chinese, Filipino, Black American, Jewish, Homosexual, Disabled and White American students who all have equal rights within Glee Club. This could be argued that the program empowers minority groups and is forward thinking in how it successfully markets to such a wide demographic. 
Oppositional readings however would criticise Glee for its cultural stereotyping and use of tokenism (Letting a token number of people from under-represented groups join this to deflect criticism) in order to draw in wider audiences. Critics have suggested the program has no interest in sustaining a positive representation of minority groups and instead, seeks to establish cultural stereotypes to entertain audiences and for the purpose of ratings. 

Marketing
Synergy in Glee includes 'The Glee Project' (an American reality TV show that clones the X Factor format with the prize being a role as a new Glee character) and also soundtrack CDs. Merchandising for Glee has been particularly successful with the added distribution of 20th Century Television, part of 20th Century Fox in turn owned bu the multinational conglomerate, The News Corporation of which Rupert Murdoch is the Chief Executive. Ownership by a multinational conglomerate has ensured significant funding has been made available for marketing and distribution including high production value TV adverts and trailers leading up to the broadcast of a new series (Series 4 is currently being broadcast in America on HBO and is due to be broadcast on Sky 1 in he UK January 2013). 
Glee is also marketed virally with trailers released by Fox on YouTube and also social networking sites like Facebook where users are 'found' by their interests as part of their profile - suggestions are made to like the Glee page and pass it on to friends and once you have added a page audiences can see previews for the next episode and listen to a little bit of the music. 
Traditional forms of advertising have also included billboards, magazine and newspaper advertising, particularly in The Sun who like, Fox TV are also one of the News Corporation companies 0 this form of synergy, as with the program being broadcast on Sky 1 ensures the targeting of mass, mainstream target audiences who tend to buy into other mass, mainstream brands like Hollywood film. Glee CD sales are successful, as much about the musical numbers (nearly always covers of existing songs) as the narrative content of the show. DVD sales suggest a loyal, dedicated target audience who are prepared to spend money.