La créativité dans la production de fictions télévisées en France : une notion en trompe-l’œil ?

The role of creativity in French television drama is the subject of constant debate in France. This article raises the question of creativity’s role and its ability to structure the organization through the lens of interactions between producers and broadcasters. We first describe the specific characteristics of the audiovisual market, and the cultural policy measures that have putatively instituted creativity as a central notion. We then show that the audiovisual production is in fact artificially and even deceptively structured around the notion of creativity, serving as mere window-dressing in producer-broadcaster relations. To make this claim, we first examine the chimerical nature of creativity. We then show how creativity quickly disappears as a structuring factor as business relations ultimately favour the logic of demand to the detriment of supply. Next, we provide a finer-grained analysis of the interactions which take place in the art world. We finally contend that creativity in this context serves as a communicative smokescreen, leveraged as a source of influence in professional relations. This analysis is based on a corpus of 16 qualitative interviews with independent producers and broadcasters