After the Interview

One of the interesting things about interviewing people who make television sitcoms in Britain is their surprise that someone would be the slightest bit interested in anything they have to say. I spent 2005–6 carrying out twenty such interviews with writers, producers, directors, and commissioners¹ working in comedy in the British television industry, and was constantly met with incredulity that such a project should be carried out.² Often, my opening question was, "Why have you agreed to this interview?" None of the replies suggested that any of the participants thought they might be able to make any valuable contribution to academic and/or social debates about the nature of broadcasting or the role of humor in society. Stephen McCrum, a BBC comedy show producer, saw the interview as a useful way to reach prospective writers who might happen to come from a university background.³ Men Behaving Badly executive producer Beryl Vertue said she was interested in education as a whole, and was willing to be involved in projects that would help students.⁴ Gareth Carrivick, a comedy TV producer, acknowledged that, generally, working in television was surprisingly solitary, and so an interview would give him a good opportunity to at least talk to someone about what he spends his days doing.⁵

For someone like me, who has spent over a decade researching television comedy, a knowing sympathy was evident. Despite television studies' attempts to demonstrate that "popular" cultural forms are of significance, it is quite clear that working on entertainment (and especially comedy) seems to require some kind of explicit justification (quite unlike research carried out on more "serious" topics such as news and documentaries).

This is borne out by the kinds of industrial research that has been carried out on television in Britain. While American television studies has quite often interviewed those who work in entertainment,⁶ research in Britain has more commonly focused on journalism and newsrooms, with quite detailed studies of the ways in which such departments function.⁷ As my participants were unused to discussing their work, many of them thanked me in e-mail correspondence after the interview for the opportunity to engage in such a reflexive practice. Some added that the interview had made them think about their job in new ways, as I had raised a number of social and critical issues that are not commonly debated within the media industries. There are clearly methodological problems in this; my intention was to find out what industry members do, rather than force them to reassess those practices. And I am not at all suggesting that these interviews had any kind of significant impact on the comedy industry or those who work within it. Far from it; the solitary manner in which many professionals—especially writers—work helps to limit the kinds of collective activity that might alter any aspect of the television industry. But the notion that I was dealing with interviewees who were not used to being asked the kinds of questions academics ask, as well as the extremely helpful, open, and engaged manner adopted by all the participants, meant I was constantly reflecting on the responsibilities inherent in employing interviewing as a research tool.

Pondering methods is, of course, an important aspect of all research approaches; this is only exacerbated by those approaches that involve people. Indeed, the ethical procedures I was required by my university to carry out before the interviews often made my participants quite worried about what on earth I was about to do to them. That is, stating that they had a right to stop the interview at any point, and that the kinds of information they were going to give me would only be published in academic work, made them think that there must be a good reason why I was reminding them of their rights. What this demonstrated was the disparity between the ethical procedures and concerns of the academy, and those of the other interviewers my participants might have encountered, especially journalists. Yet the ethical procedures by which I was bound only placed limits, on the whole, on the interview process...