Abstract
The research presented in this paper is part of a larger project comparing the systems of television entertainment production in Germany and the UK. This paper focuses on the following research questions: What is the nature of the relationship between broadcasters and production companies? What are the dominant institutions in this relationship? What is the impact of these institutions on innovativeness? Agency-Theory is used as the theoretical approach to describe the relationship and the empirical findings are bases on 16 semi-structured interviews with television executives from German broadcasters and production companies.