Reinventing Television News: Innovative Formats in a Social Media Environment

Abstract

Television news consumption is declining, while videos on YouTube and social media are on the rise. Newscasts seem unable to attract a young audience that actively engages online. The purpose of our study is to establish how television news could be renovated by selecting the experts’ proposals and by exploring case studies of innovative audio-visual news formats. We posed two research questions: (a) How television newscasts could be renewed in the stages of production, edition, presentation and distribution? (b) Which news formats are innovating in storytelling and connecting with audiences? Our findings suggest that young audiences must be taken seriously by broadcasters for their long-term future. The experts suggest ways to experiment with new languages, diversify the news offer, foster journalists’ communicative skills and increase interaction with users.