News broadcasting
News broadcasting is the medium of broadcasting various news events and other information via television, radio, or the internet in the field of broadcast journalism. The content is usually either produced locally in a radio studio or television studio newsroom, or by a broadcast network. A news broadcast may include material such as sports coverage, weather forecasts, traffic reports, political commentary, expert opinions, editorial content, and other material that the broadcaster feels is relevant to their audience. An individual news program is typically reported in a series of individual stories that are presented by one or more anchors. A frequent inclusion is live or recorded interviews by field reporters.
Structure, content, and style
Television
Television news programs inform and discuss current events via the medium of television. A "news bulletin" or a "newscast" are television programs lasting from seconds to hours that provide updates on events. Programs can vary their focus; some newscasts discuss largely international or national matters, while others will focus on regional and local news events.Example providers of generalist broadcast news shows focusing on national and international matters include BBC News, NBC News, CNN, Fox News Channel, CNA, ANC, TRT, and Al Jazeera. In addition to general news outlets, there are many specialized news outlets. ESPNews, Fox Sports, and Eurosport News cover sports journalism topics; CNBC, Bloomberg Television, and Fox Business Network are examples that cover business news. Local programming covers the many examples of smaller stations with a regional focus.
Newscasts, also known as bulletins or news programs, differ in content, tone, and presentation style depending on the format of the channel/station on which they appear, and their timeslot. In most parts of the world, national television networks will have bulletins featuring national and international news. The top-rated shows will often air in the evening during "prime time", but there are also morning newscasts of two to three hours in length. Rolling news channels broadcast news content 24 hours a day. The advent of the internet has allowed the regular 24-hour-a-day presentation of many video and audio news reports, which are updated when additional information becomes available; many television broadcasters provide content originally provided on-air as well as exclusive or supplementary news content on their websites. Local news may be presented by standalone local television stations, stations affiliated with national networks or by local studios which "opt-out" of national network programming at specified points. Different news programming may be aimed at different audiences, depending on age, socio-economic group, or those from particular sections of society. "Magazine-style" television shows may mix news coverage with topical lifestyle issues, debates, or entertainment content. Public affairs programs provide analysis of and interviews about political, social, and economic issues.
News programs feature one or two anchors segueing into news stories filed by a reporter by describing the story to be shown; however, some stories within the broadcast are read by the presenter themselves; in the former case, the anchor "tosses" to the reporter to introduce the featured story; likewise, the reporter "tosses" back to the anchor once the taped report has concluded and the reporter provides additional information. Often in situations necessitating long-form reporting on a story, the reporter is interviewed by the anchor, known as a 'two-way', or a guest involved in or offering analysis on the story is interviewed by a reporter or anchor. There may also be breaking news stories which will present live rolling coverage.
Television news organizations employ several anchors and reporters to provide reports. They may also employ specialty reporters that focus on reporting certain types of news content, meteorologists or weather anchors who provide weather forecasts – more common in local news and on network morning programs – and sports presenters that report on ongoing, concluded, or upcoming
Packages will usually be filmed at a relevant location and edited in an editing suite in a newsroom or a remote contribution edit suite in a location some distance from the newsroom. They may also be edited in mobile editing vans, or satellite vans or trucks, and transmitted back to the newsroom. Live coverage will be broadcast from a relevant location and sent back to the newsroom via fixed cable links, microwave radio, production truck, satellite truck, or via online streaming. Roles associated with television news include a technical director, floor director audio technician, and a television crew of operators running character graphics, teleprompters, and professional video cameras. Most news shows are broadcast live.
Radio
Radio news is transmitted through the medium of radio, meaning it is audio-only. It was a dominant form of information dissemination to households from the 1910s–1940s before home televisions became cheap and common. Radio news has persisted, often with short updates at certain intervals on the hour, although the medium of radio has generally shifted toward people doing something else such as driving, working or waking up, compared to television.Radio news broadcasts can range from as little as one minute to as much as the station's entire schedule, such as the case of all-news radio, or talk radio. Stations that use a "wheel" format tend to keep to a set schedule of certain programming at certain specific minutes on the hour, and one of these segments is frequently a news bulletin. These short bulletins will provide overviews of any breaking news of interest, and may include local concerns such as weather forecasts or traffic reports.
Internet
The vast majority of professionally produced video or audio news on the Internet tends to be attached to existing news organizations. Radio stations will upload their news reports as streamable podcasts and television networks will sometimes make their broadcasts available over Internet video. Print newspapers will sometimes feature video on their websites for breaking news events and for long-form video journalism. The usual focus on the Internet tends to be a la carte, however – rather than a recap show of the issues of the day like a TV or radio show, Internet news sites will usually allow the browser to find the one story they are interested in and watch a video strictly on that, even if said video might have been a segment of a larger show. Internet native news shows do exist such as Vice News, but they tend to seep elsewhere: Vice News ran a broadcast on HBO for a few years despite starting as a YouTube channel, for example, eventually transferring the show to their own network called Viceland and later Vice On TV.Outside the realm of traditional news organizations with paid journalists are citizen journalists, independents who report on their own and use sites such as YouTube to display their content. Independents also heavily cover commentary on news: while most independents cannot originally report on anything other than local issues due to budgetary concerns, opinions are cheaper. As such, Internet journalism has many video broadcasts & podcasts of opinion closer to the talk radio model. Hyper-local news is also more feasible on the Internet: issues such as school board meetings streamed on video, town parades, and so on.
History
Silent news films were shown in cinemas from the late 19th century. In 1909, Pathé started producing weekly newsreels in Europe. Pathé began producing newsreels for the UK in 1910 and the US in 1911.News broadcasts in the United States were initially transmitted over the radio. NBC began broadcasts in November 1926, with CBS entering production on September 25, 1927. Both initially discussed similar topics, such as election results, presidential inaugurations, and other matters of concern to the general public. However, NBC soon emerged as the dominant force for entertainment talent. In response, CBS President William S Paley focused on giving CBS Radio an upscale reputation with better news as well as commentary programs with well-regarded hosts such as Lowell Thomas. Both broadcasters faced stiff competition from the newspapers. The outbreak of World War II led to a great increase in the quantity of news programming, consuming as much as 20% of the schedules of the major networks. Chief among these reporters was Edward R. Murrow, whose reports from London kept the American public focused on a war far from home. Also, the eventual "big three" were complete in 1945; the FCC forced a sale of NBC Blue due to anti-trust concerns, and the newly independent unit was renamed ABC.
A general shift over time happened in the style of the evening newscasts in most countries. In the 1950s, television was novel enough that it was considered entertainment. In the 1960s and 70s, television newscasts tended to be unusually "serious" by later standards, featuring more "hard news" and less light entertainment mixed in. The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite is one famous example, although similar styles took place on the BBC in the United Kingdom, on shows in the Eastern Bloc, and so on, with high viewership concentrated in just a few prestige newscasts. This was something of an artifact of both technology and media culture: few channels were available, and those that did tended to take news casting seriously, even if lighter news could potentially have gotten more viewers. Government regulation also affected the news landscape: in the United States, the Federal Communications Commission forced networks to abide by strict public-interest requirements that required broadcasting news, while television in the Soviet Union was strictly regulated by the government which looked on frivolous topics with disfavor. In the 1980s and 90s, this tended to fall away as a consequence of cable and satellite technology allowing a more fragmented market and government reluctance to interfere as closely. Increased choice in channels led to viewers declining to watch overly serious newscasts; successful network news shows tended to be ones that either focused on entertainment or at least mixed it in, such as morning talk shows or news magazines such as Today and 60 Minutes. Audiences that prefer more serious news have migrated to news-focused stations such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC for American examples. These changes have been criticized as having effects on larger society. An example from television in Italy is a study of Mediaset's rollout in Italy in the 1980s found that Mediaset's programming was slanted against news and educational content than its competitor RAI. A study in 2019 found that individuals in regions with an earlier rollout of Mediaset were more susceptible to populist appeals and less interested in "sophisticated" political arguments. The study said the effect included populist parties in general that offered simple slogans and easy cure-alls, including non-Berlusconi populist parties such as the Five Star Movement.
From 2000 to 2010, overall viewership of television broadcast news continued to decline. Some news-adjacent cable programs gained fame and success in this era. However, their gains did not offset the continuing steep decline in viewership of mainline network news. This era saw diversification and fragmentation proceed even further as new niche networks gained prominence such as the business-focused CNBC, Bloomberg Television, and Fox Business. Instead, people used the Internet for news rather than television broadcasts, both in mainline sites such as ones runs by newspapers as well as independent blogs and message boards with other Internet-users sharing opinions and news Internet news, while a competitor, tended not to use live broadcast as a style, except when streaming existing television programs. Another change in news broadcasts in the 2000s, at least in the United States, was a rediscovered interest in health news and consumer news – areas of special interest to women that had traditionally been written off as too minor for the evening newscasts, but proved to be steady sources of viewer curiosity and ratings.