What was the role of satire and parody in the early years of Norwegian television? This article examines the aesthetics and humour of the sketch-based comedy programme, discussing how artists explored the comic potential of the new medium. Applying a distinction between social and political satire, the study finds a predominance of the social. Politicians and political institutions were seldom targets of jokes. In the field of parody, the article shows how television within a few years became the main object of TV-parody. Another aspect discussed is parody as a negotiation between high and low art and genres, not only mocking serious art but also the new popular culture of the sixties.

A total of five doctoral thesis have recently been submitted in Norway with the explicit aim of reading TV texts in the context of the production set-up, the "programme department" in question. The majority address the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, both before and after its loss of the national TV monopoly in 1992, and the programmes scrutinised are news, general "enlightenment" programmes, entertainment and children's programmes. The present article examines the methodological approaches and research designs applied in the five theses, so as to discuss the pro's and cons of the various ways in which the reading of TV texts may be incorporated into a major programme study. It turns out that the reading of texts sometimes serves as a "case", an illumination of a point already made from the department's policy statements, but sometimes also as an item carrying a more independent meaning. The argument goes that textual readings serve their purpose most successfully when applied in a multi-layered analysis, encompassing both the text and its various environmental surroundings in toto.

In this article, we want to develop a discussion about research into television history. In so doing, we are attempting to raise some questions concerning the historiography of television and to place our present project in a theoretical and methodological context. As a team, we are currently engaged in research into the history of World in Action, the long-running and widely praised British 'current affairs' series, and our comments are largely informed by our experiences in undertaking this inquiry. Later in the article, we look at the specific questions raised by research in this area of television output and give some indication of the nature and success of our own studies. However, we hope that our remarks will offer some insight that will prove valuable in a broader setting – for historical research of a range of television forms and in a variety of national circumstances. With this in mind, we open with a more general discussion of aims and methods relevant to historical research of television, beginning with the overriding question of purposes.

The author presents new and never before published research on the drama section of the trans-national Nordic television programme exchange, Nordvisjonen. The article is based on the author's research on the source material in the archives of the organisation.

Even though the conventional wisdom of media researchers, and other persons previously involved in the Nordvisjonen organisation, has stressed the slow degradation of the idealistic and non-commercial aspects of the exchange, this article finds that the drama exchange went through gradual changes, from being an idealistic organisation formed between non-commercial public broadcasters to becoming an organisation based on commercial premises but still able to develop through dynamic processes of adjustment to changing conditions for public broadcasting in the Nordic countries. Nordvisjonen remains today a force to be reckoned with, and the number of programming hours exchanged between the Nordic countries is today greater than ever before.

European broadcasting is increasingly drawn into the global economy. Today the traditional public service channels have to compete with commercial channels. This means that they must adjust to the wishes of the viewers. The article compares the total output of television programs during one week in 2000 on the main Dutch and Norwegian television channels and analyses the differences and similarities of public and commercial channels. In addition, the output of different program categories is compared with the amount of viewer attention such output received in the two countries.

The article discusses professional and personal aspects related to job-transfers between public relations and journalism. The Norwegian journalist organisation (Norsk Journalistlag) has tried to regulate the job market by invoking the principle of quarantine. I see the quarantining of job seekers as an element in the professionalization of journalism. I conclude, on the basis of interviews with journalists and public relations practitioners, that the quarantine is an effective device on a symbolic level, while the practical gains are much more uncertain. The discussion is linked theoretically to Erving Goffman's theory of stigma.

Even though scientific data about the relationship between science and the media is scant, results thus far indicate that conflicts easily develop between researchers and journalists in a crisis situation. Primarily, the tension is based on two main components, the question of professionalism and the production of knowledge. Since the mid-1980s the critical approach has challenged the traditional popularising paradigm, based on the idea that the media should mediate the "facts" and "the truth". According to the critical paradigm, there are many rivalling "truths"; scientific facts are perceived as constructions created and interpreted differently in new contexts.