Popular Crime and Populist Investigation:The <i>CSI</i> Franchise and Multimedia Participation

Abstract

The worldwide success of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000-2015) hasattracted a number of publications which aim to understand the series’popularity (Allen 2007, Byers and Johnson 2009, Cohan 2008, Kompare2010). As a defining US series of the 2000s which had a significant impact onthe representation of crime on television, it opens up several avenues ofinvestigation, and I am here particularly interested in understanding CSI asparadigmatic for the ways the US television industries have come to engagewith their audience. Television in the United States changed dramaticallyfrom the 1970s onwards when a combination of regulation—the FinSynRules (1972)—and a development in delivery technologies—in particularcable— brought a sense of economic crisis to the until then burgeoningindustry. As John T. Caldwell (1995, 5) chronicles, this economic crisis,combined with changes in programming practices, the industry’s mode ofproduction, and audience expectations affected the look of US television, butalso had ideological implications. Caldwell emphasizes that the 1980s’“televisuality” was a historically situated effect, though much of what hedescribes continues well beyond the decade, including the sense of crisis.Indeed, the US television industries continue to experience similar issues asthey did in the 1980s, particularly as a result of audience fragmentation, whichin the era of digitization, if anything, has become more exacerbated. Myinterest in CSI, then, is driven by the wish to understand how this sense ofcrisis has affected the relationship between the industry and its audience, andin particular how the attempts by the industry to harness popularity throughmerchandising and franchising has led to the creation of additional texts thatengage the audience in particular ways