Muddling through and TV enterprising in Sweden

By using data from an extensive study of independent TV production companies in Sweden, this article seeks to demonstrate that there are amendment opportunities to the original formulation of “muddling through” in a TV production context. The TV production industry is special in that the companies are extremely project oriented with very few permanent employees and with outside cadres involved temporarily. The companies also have a strict division of the work consisting of TV production (delivering TV programs to distributors), by managing and marketing formats (workable program ideas in an elaborated form) to TV broadcasters or to other TV production companies. These are the two forms of direct money making. At that, representatives of the industry conceive of it as in transience. Concerns about trends and ongoing changes dominate strategic work. The finding is that “muddling through” or “disjointed incrementalism” takes on different shapes in these three domains: TV production, format work and strategy making.