Negotiating the platform turn: Genre, format, and co-production in RTP’s fiction strategy

This article investigates how Portugal’s public service broadcaster, Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP), has adapted its fiction strategies over the past two decades, contrasting the pre-platform period (2005–2014) with the platform era following the entry of global streaming services into the Portuguese market (2015–2024). Drawing on platformisation theory and scholarship on small-market public service media (PSM), the study employs a mixed-methods, longitudinal approach, combining quantitative analysis of RTP1’s fiction output, qualitative content analysis of two series, and a semi-structured, exploratory interview with the programming director. Findings show that traditional pressures – such as limited budgets, small audience scale, and market constraints – were reconfigured in the platform era, generating both challenges and opportunities for innovation. Key strategies included a shift from horizontal to vertical scheduling, the increased production of medium-form series, an expansion of drama and crime genres, and selective transnational co-productions with global platforms. The study highlights how platformisation transforms content strategies in peripheral media systems, producing context-specific forms of constraint and creativity, and offers new insights into the adaptive capacities of small-market PSM in the digital streaming era.