Bennett’s Multiplatforming Public Service Broadcasting and 'Social Media as Television Production Technology' are both concerned with what happens to production cultures, processes, business models and aesthetics when long-established media, television and film, encounter new, interactive and participatory digital media forms. Whilst Multiplatforming Public Service Broadcasting looked at how the BBC and Channel 4 adapted to rise of the Internet and audiences’ uptake of interactive digital services, 'Social Media as Television Production Technology' examined the prolifieration of social media as a tool used by TV producers.
Across this work James Bennett has been interested to chart, understand, challenge and practically change how “linear production” engages with the opportunities and affordances of interactive and digital platforms. As a result, both publications are ‘industry reports’, launched in collaboration with key industry partners, including the BBC, Channel 4 and Pact – the Producers’ Alliance of Cinema and Television – in each case. Key findings in both instances examined the barriers to innovation, to digital-TV collaborations, the distance between strategy and implementation and the difficulties involved in aligning linear and interactive timelines and production processes. Each report makes a series of recommendations for the development of TV-Digital inter-relations as both a commercial and public service opportunity for the sector.
Collectively Bennett’s work offers some understandings of the chaotic, creative and challenging nature of change in television and screen industries production cultures. In so doing he has attempted to take an applied approach to researching creative industries, working with the sector rather than about it.
The themes in the above works are continued in his current work as Director of the StoryFutures and StoryFutures Academy projects on immersive technologies.