1 Contextualising Quality US Television Programmes for the UK: The Guardian’s Media and Television Blogs and the Role of Critics Paul Rixon, University of Roehampton In this chapter I explore the way British newspapers’ digital strategies are impacting on the popular and critical discourse they produce around quality American television programmes; a discourse which plays an important role in contextualising American programmes for the British viewer. To provide a focus for this work I will be concentrating on the role of newspaper-based blogs. As I do this I will explore three main questions: firstly, what form of critical and popular coverage is appearing with these new means of writing about television; secondly, what is the resulting discourse on American quality television programmes? And lastly, what role is there for the television critic in this new phase of newspaper television coverage? As I explore these questions I will, using work by Pierre Bourdieu, also reflect on issues relating to the symbolic struggle occurring around American television, the (re- )emergence of new television taste groups, the work of cultural intermediaries and how the appreciation of American television plays a role cultural distinction. 1 Indeed, as Bourdieu argues, tastes, values and forms of cultural distinction are not static; there is a continual process of struggle occurring over these, 2 something we need to understand at this time of huge digital and cultural changes. To undertake this analysis I will look at one of the most influential and trusted newspaper websites in the UK, www.guardian.com, which belongs to the Guardian. 3 This is not to suggest that the Guardian’s coverage dominates and shapes the discourse around television in Britain but that the nature of its digital strategy is indicative of the changes happening in the media and the changing nature of television coverage provided by the main national newspapers. The Guardian’s digital strategy The Guardian was one of the first papers to develop a digital strategy, soon followed by other British newspapers. 4 One of its main objectives was to view its digital web- based activities as an integral part of how the Guardian would operate in the future, and not as some add-on to the normal production of the newspaper. 5 Indeed, it was the first paper to announce, in June 2006, that it ‘would publish stories first to the brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Roehampton University Research Repository