New standards for radio news?

Ib Poulsen

University of Roskilde, Denmark

Abstract

In Denmark nation-wide news on radio has been dominated by PSB since the very beginning of radio news broadcasting. The main reason is the monopoly maintained by Danmarks Radio for almost 80 years. Last year this situation changed. On November 15, 2003, two nation-wide commercial radio stations went on air: Radio 100FM, owned by the Dutch Talpa, and Sky Radio, owned by Rupert Murdoch. According to the franchise, Sky Radio in particular is under the obligation to broadcast news on public service conditions.

The aim of the paper is, first, to examine how this is done in the news programmes from Sky Radio, and second to compare the news from Sky Radio with the news programmes of Danmarks Radio’s P3, the public service radio channel which is the chief competitor for Sky Radio. The examination of Sky Radio’s news programmes will include selection of the news, what is told and how, as well as the addressing of the listener by the news reader. This examination will be compared with a similar examination of the news from P3 within the same period of time.

Based on the results of analysis, discussion will address if this new competitive situation seems to set new standards for radio news, and to what extent radio news of this kind are able to meet the claims of public service news addressing a modern, heterogeneous and complex society.

Paper not available.