Return of the talking heads: Entering the third wave of television news dramaturgy

Abstract

The present article suggests that the brief history of Western television news dramaturgy can be expounded as three major waves: from the early days of the talking heads in the studio,over the narrativization of the field report to a (re-)current studio-and field-based talking heads format. In order to analyze the latest development entering the third wave,we propose a theoretically based dramaturgical model for the television news item. The analysis concludes that,with the current ‘return’ of the talking heads format,the pre-produced and pre-packaged bulletin program about past events is dissolving and transforming into an evaluative present-and future-oriented update format that resembles the 24-hour newsonly channels. Production time merges with broadcast time so that the uncertainty of live spreads to the dramaturgy.