 |
 |
|
NEWS & FEATURES |
Interview of the month - December 2004: Interview of Georges Leclere, Director Executive of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in New York What are the main characteristics of the television news industry in the US today? The recent evolution of the TV news industry in the USA today is the result of two phenomena: the mergers and acquisitions in the industry and the imperative to be profitable. In fact, the immediate consequence of these strategic concentrations is a limited amount of large groups such as Viacom for CBS, General Electric for NBC, Disney for ABC, Time for CNN and News Corp. for Fox. Additionally, those large corporations tend to adopt a low risk politic in order to preserve a certain status quo. Furthermore, the TV news divisions have to generate a certain income as any other divisions of the group they belong to. How do you think this is impacting the quality of the information delivered? We all know that “what bleeds leads”! Then, the tendency has been to focus on “big news” such as crimes, lawsuits, scandals, as opposed to cultural activities, political or minority issues for example, which generate less interest from the public, therefore less money. This is the exact opposite of the initial situation when the public services first introduced television news in France. Originally, it symbolized the unlimited free access to information regardless of your social, economic or cultural background. PBS, which is the equivalent to a French public channel in the USA (financed both by the Government and the public), tends to focus on subjects that are less profitable reflecting the minorities’ opinions. What future can we hope for the TV news in the US? Local and regional TV news usually do a better job delivering a less selective type of news and giving more voice to the minorities. In addition, the new technologies now allow watchers to choose the programs. We can hope that at some point people may get tired to listen to the same thing everyday and try to get more sophisticated type of information either via the internet or simply in the newspapers. Thank you Georges.
|
 |