The economy of just-in-time television newscasting

Abstract

Since the 1990s, 24-hour national and especially transnational television news channels (BBC World, CNN International, CNBC, etc.) have imposed themselves as models for nonstop news production in Western Europe and have propagated a new model of professional excellence. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted at the pan-European channel Euronews, this article discusses the characteristics of the concrete organization of the new division of journalistic work such as its designs for processing and producing just-in-time news, and how it tailors its product for a transnational audience. The functioning of Euronews is a living laboratory for studying the constraints that bear on all-news networks, including the relentless reduction in production costs, the effects of temporal compression (spot assignments that are unpredictable, ‘live’ broadcasts, etc.), and the development of sedentary or ‘sit-down journalism’. This article offers a rare ethnographic window into the workaday universe of 24-hour news broadcasting