Earthwake: Science Across Television

(November 28th 2007) Have you ever wondered about the transmission of “science” through television? Or the reach of television as an educator of the massed television audiences across the European continent? Why is science on television anyway, and how do programme-makers choose what science is shown, and what format it should take? A workshop report in four parts by Jeremy Garwood.

In the context of an ongoing series of European Commission-funded projects (this one is for the EC's Framework Programme 7), a workshop was recently held (8/9 November) at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, to discuss the ways in which science and technology are currently presented on European television and how this will evolve over the coming decade.

The speakers at the workshop came from a wide variety of media production, science communication, and scientific backgrounds, and included representatives of BBC Drama Productions and Current Affairs, the European Broadcasting Union (Eurovision), the Scientific Director of the European Space Agency, the head of Science Communications at CERN, and the director of the German Screenwriters' Guild.

Traditionally, the base of science communication on television has been the hard-core science documentaries that present concentrated and (usually) factually and technically accurate descriptions of scientific findings and ongoing technological research. However, there is now a new philosophy of "science in society" with a focus on discretely incorporating science into popular television programmes as a replacement for the committed science programmes which, it is now argued, do not bring science to the masses since they are already 'preaching to the converted'.

The avowed aim of the Earthwake project is to "harness the appeal of popular strands of TV to create a new awareness and interest in science", and to do this by finding creative ways of introducing much more science into television drama, wildlife/natural history, current affairs, travel and sports programmes, which attract the bulk of the television audiences.

As the Secretary General of 'Euroscience', Raymond Seltz, said: "The challenge of this workshop is to propose new ways to communicate science and technology to a public that doesn't even notice it is learning something."

Three underlying assumptions behind much of this work are that:

1. people will be more receptive to "science" in their daily lives if they have a more familiar image of what science and scientists are really like, and hence that they will be more inclined to vote in support of science friendly policies;
   
   
2. that a more entertaining and appealing presentation of science will help to attract more European youth to the study of science subjects at school and in higher education and that this will eventually help to fill the perceived lack of scientifically skilled and literate workers in Europe.
   
   
3. that citizens will become less fearful and apprehensive of scientific change if they can put a human face to it and can feel that it is occurring at a human scale that they can relate to. In such circumstances they might be less inclined to block and hinder progress. Indeed, they may even be prepared to participate in effecting change since they may come to feel actively empowered as individuals who can play roles, for example, in addressing ecological trauma from global warming, industrial pollution, and resource depletion.

The key topics from this Earthwake meeting covered strategies for enhancing the presence of science in TV drama, the presentation of science in news, documentaries and current affairs, and the specific image of 'space science' on television. The development of alternative audiovisual means of diffusing science was also considered, notably through the use of internet streaming, web-TV, and advertising.


1. Science in TV Drama - beyond 'Cops and Docs'.

Traditionally the most successful television shows that feature an image of science have involved forensic science in crime fiction, medical science in hospital dramas and, of course, the space science and engineering that underlies science fiction. In recent years, it has been the 'cops and docs' programmes that have consistently dominated the European viewing audiences, the most popular nine shows all being of North American origin (8 are from the US (e.g. Crime Scene Investigation (27 million), Emergency Room (30 million), Grey's Anatomy (20 million); one, 'ReGenesis', is Canadian). In the United States itself, every year since 1995, at least one of the top three television series deals with 'cops and docs' science.

However, whatever the preoccupations of American programme-makers, it appears that the European vision of television drama is dictated by its core target audience - 50 year old women. Hence, although Lisa Osborne, Head of Programme Development at BBC Drama Productions (coincidentally a woman around 50), said she was open to the presentation of any kind of science content in drama, she stressed that the principal motivating force in her drama selection was the story: "Where's the story? What's the story I want to tell?" and agreed that 'sex and death' are good motivators for writers and producers. She also remarked that "science fiction is perceived as being for teenage boys."

When asked why there wasn't more science in TV drama at the moment, she replied that C.P. Snow's 'Two Cultures' was alive and well in British TV drama: when she did a survey of the 25 producers in her office, she discovered that not a single one had studied science at university, and only three had studied a school science subject to the age of 18. She assured us this situation was true throughout the British Arts' scene - no-one had had any significant exposure to science since school. In such a climate, scientists should not be astonished at the poor quality of the little science that was presented in television arts programmes.


Docu-dramas and the Eureka effect.

The popularity of docu-dramas had offered the latest examples of science-based dramas, notably through the dramatisation of scientists' lives and discoveries. The two examples Lisa Osborne chose to discuss were a dramatised biography of the physically-handicapped physicist, Stephen Hawking, and the interactions of Einstein with the English physicist, Eddington, in the formulation and proof of General Relativity (to be shown in 2008).

The turning points in characters' lives are focal to drama, hence she was particularly interested by the 'eureka' moment in scientific discoveries. To illustrate this, we were shown video clips, first, of a dishevelled Albert Einstein standing in the middle of a dark, damp Swiss cobbled street as vintage cars with their headlights on drove past him on either side: this was as a 'metaphor' for his discovery of the inertial frame of reference. Subsequently, we were shown Arthur Stanley Eddington at dinner with his family: filled with great enthusiasm for the theory of general relativity, he chooses to demonstrate the curvature of space by removing the tablecloth, getting the family to hold it out, he then places a globular loaf of bread in the centre (representing the sun) and then rolls an apple (symbolic of light) in curved trajectories around it - it seems Eddington's family were suitably edified by this demonstration.

Finally, from the 'Hawking' docu-drama, there was a scene where Stephen Hawking, having climbed laboriously onto a train, sits in the carriage waiting for it to start moving, observing the movement of other trains in the station, only to have his 'eureka' moment, whence he then leaps back off the train with relative dexterity, calls back the mathematician, Roger Penrose, who had been seeing him off, and proceeds, with a piece of chalk, to sketch graphic representations of the 'Big Bang' with reversed time arrows running across the station platform.

Lisa Osborne acknowledged that these were gross simplifications but that this was the means they had chosen to explain science and physics to a general audience. It should not be forgotten that the "cops and docs" series had created an appetite for science - "look at the huge numbers of students enrolling to study Forensic Science following the appeal of series such as "CSI" and "Silent Witness".

"Audiences need to feel that what they're watching is somehow 'true'." However, finding screenwriters for science-based drama had proved to be a problem. For example, on the theme of 'Global Warming', they had found no-one when writers thought it was just a story about the 'weather', but everyone loved it when it was presented as a 'political thriller'.


Soap operas - the 1 in 10.

Sabine Eckhart, a German TV producer (who also happens to be a woman around 50) assured us that the core audience for drama in Germany was also, well, made up of women around 50. In response to the findings of a UK survey that claimed that most people in Britain learned their science from the BBC soap opera, "Eastenders" (which portrays the life of working class people in the contemporary East End of London - has a UK audience of over 20 million), she affirmed that the way ahead lay through soap operas (which she happens to produce for German television): "You need to start with soap operas, to have scientists involved in the writing of the scripts and in this way you can diffuse scientific ideas through the system."

For example, she said the most effective way to introduce the life of a scientist to a popular audience would to be to feature a scientist as one of the ten characters in an on-going soap opera and thereby to gradually introduce the world of science through the interactions of this scientist with the other characters, showing what his laboratory looked like, what kind of problems scientists have with thair experiments and work environment. Andrew Millington, head of EuroPAWS (public awareness of science) heartily agreed, citing the presence of a realistic student nurse character in Eastenders who, over a period of weeks, was seen preparing for and passing her nursing exams, presenting a mass audience with a positive insight into what nursing involved and how one became a nurse.


Televised Women in Science and Technology.

Katharina Uppenbrink, Director of the German Screenwriters' Guild, described the outcome of the EuroWISTDOM project (European Women in Science TV Drama On Message). She began by remarking that, for political reasons, screenwriters across Europe were increasingly obliged to interact and that their overall situation was similar in the different states. EuroWISTDOM had been established as a strategy for tackling the lack of female involvement in careers in science, engineering and technology in European countries. It sought to show women in leading roles in science, engineering and technology-based stories on television. Specifically, the project set out to encourage and support writers or producer-writer teams from all over Europe to develop new ideas for TV drama on a theme involving contemporary science and technology that also gives prominence to women as scientists or engineers. The 'Euroscience' organisation had helped to realise these new ideas by providing scientific advice. A European competition had been held and significant financial aid had been awarded for the development of the seven prize-winning TV drama proposals with a direct view to their commercial exploitation. Most of the proposals dealt with biomedical science and chose a serial format. The winners included a race to cure cancer, an AIDs drama story, and a race to develop a quantum computer powerful enough to 'solve' the science necessary to counteract a terrorist virus attack. However, there was also a teenage girls' science series, the story of how Zoe, a 12 year old girl, is inspired by her scientific godmother, a series based in the world of the high-tech car industry, and a story about the preservation of historical documents.

By bringing together writers, scientist/engineers, and programme producers, there was now a clearer idea as to their respective needs. However, there was an ongoing need to discuss more closely with scientists and engineers as to which topics were 'appropriate' for use in drama, and how they could be made 'accessible' to a mass audience. In this context, Andrew Millington spoke of the science evenings that EuroPAWS have been organising in Britain with the specific aim of bringing together scientists and writer/producers so that they can develop a better mutual understanding of the issues involved in presenting 'quality science' in a popular format.


A Eurovision Science Contest?

Bettina Brinkmann, Head of Formats and Special Events at the European Broadcasting Union (best known for their annual 'Eurovision Song Contest') described the development of a new Eurovision 'Global Warming' science project that seeks to reach the general public using alternatives to science documentaries. The project's development had included consultation with the CEO of Greenpeace, the producer of the highly acclaimed Jamie Oliver 'School dinner' programmes (which had stimulated political change by showing the poor nutritive quality of the food 'enjoyed' by British schoolchildren), and Stefan Rahmstorf, a high-profile oceanographer and climatologist and member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The television programme developers had consequently chosen the genre of 'Factual Entertainment' with a core target audience aged 25-44 ("unlikely to watch documentaries together as a family"). They have decided that they need a stylish early evening show along the lines of a 'Eurovision Science Contest' with European-type scientific heroes that the audience can identify with. They wanted to project a positive message, that "it was better that people did something even if it was not necessarily a lot better than doing nothing." Although the actual details of this contest remain to be developed, the timetable is relatively short-term since Eurovision is aiming to make an impact before the next Kyoto meeting on global warming (Phase 2 renegotiation) scheduled for 2009.

Bettina Brinkmann disputed the assertion that most people think science is boring, citing the success of the American cartoon series, 'The Simpsons' in dealing with questions of 'Global Warming'. It was also noted in passing that the scriptwriters for 'The Simpsons' possessed more science PhDs and Masters degrees than any other programme on American television. Nobody could think of a European equivalent.

The second instalment of this report will look at the presence of science in News and Current Affairs. The third part will present the internet streaming of science videos and look in detail at two projects - the French university web-TV system, 'U-TV', and the European Commission's 'Athena Web'. In the final instalment, the particular case of 'space science' on television will be considered.

Last Changes: 28.11.2007