In this chapter I will look at the portrayal of archaeology in TV and newspapers in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany, and discuss both emerging differences between them and general trends they share.

TV stations and newspapers are playing a particularly important role in contemporary popular culture. According to research published online by the British TV station Channel 4, British adults watch every day an average of about four hours TV (Americans reportedly watch more), and only 0.6% of the adult population state that they ”never watch commercial TV”. What is more, 15-24 year olds consider ”watching TV” and ”reading newspapers” as the most important social activities to make time for (45% and 41% agreement respectively). To a greater extend than any other media TV programmes and newspapers are both influencing and reflecting what people know and how they think.

I am assuming here that TV programmes and newspaper articles are significant indicators for larger trends in popular culture. From a methodological standpoint, it is important to realize though that the reason for that is not that producers and editors simply decided what very large audiences, for lack of choice, get to watch or read. As far as the largest part of their revenues is concerned, contemporary mass media are not in the business of distributing content to paying audiences. Instead, they are selling audiences to advertisers. What is shown on TV or printed in newspapers can be seen as a means of reaching particular sections of the population that certain companies find interesting to reach with their ads. It is therefore essential for TV stations and newspaper editors to know and address the interests of these audiences, and a large amount of market research is dedicated to learning about them through (usually confidential) research. The fact that particular stations and papers continue, or come, to exist is an indication that they succeed in this aim better than their competitors with alternative content. The methodological risk of media analyses is thus less that one extrapolates from the personal preferences of the few individuals ultimately responsible for their content, but that they will focus too much on the existing preferences of those sections of the population which are most attractive for advertisers – often 16-54 year olds with good incomes.

The situation is slightly different regarding state-regulated media such as public service TV stations (e.g. SVT in Sweden, ZDF and ARD in Germany, the BBC in the U.K.). Instead of simply selling advertising space, they are receiving license fees from all TV viewers but are in exchange subjected to complicated, politically motivated regulations. It is therefore harder to infer about popular culture from public service TV. In practice, however, these channels – in order to justify their privileges – compete increasingly (though less exclusively) for the same audiences as commercial channels. Their content thus often expresses the same trends.

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