There is a very diverse range of news formats across broadcast, print and online news providers in the UK, spanning traditional platform-specific formats such as fixed-schedule television bulletins and print newspapers, to innovative interactive and longform online journalism, to satirical news sources and podcasts.
Television News Formats
Fixed-schedule bulletins continue to be the mainstay of television news programming in the UK. The designated Public Service Broadcasters (PSB) with statutory obligations to provide news programming on their channels – BBC One[1]; ITV/Channel 3; Channel 4 and Channel 5 – each broadcast several bulletins on weekdays, with reduced obligations at weekends. Bulletins on BBC One – including the channel’s flagship evening bulletin News at Six which commands the largest television news audience in the UK – ITV and Channel 5 are “general purpose” bulletins, covering a range of topics over a 20-30 minute bulletin. Channel 4’s nightly bulletin is an hour in length and includes longer segments, more international news and investigative content. BBC One and ITV also host regional and local television news bulletins, typically appended to the main scheduled national programmes. The BBC also broadcasts Newsround, a daily news bulletin for children shown on the CBBC Channel (until 2012 it was also broadcast on BBC One).
There is also a wide range of current affairs programming on the UK’s PSB channels. These consist of pre-recorded investigative journalism programmes, such as the BBC One’s Panorama, ITV’s Tonight or Channel 4’s Dispatches, mixed live/recorded programmes like BBC Two’s weeknight show Newsnight, and panel discussion shows such as The Andrew Neil Show on BBC and Peston on ITV. Current affairs programming for Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish audiences is also broadcast.
24-hour news programming is also provided on the BBC News channel and BBC Parliament, and on the Sky News channel. In addition to reactive rolling news coverage, BBC News and Sky News provide a mix of bulletins (including simultaneous broadcasting of BBC One bulletins by BBC News) and pre-recorded programming including international reporting, travel and discussion shows. Both channels also host nightly discussion shows reviewing the following morning’s newspaper front pages, typically released in time for these programmes. Sky also operates a 24-hour sports news channel, Sky Sports News.
Finally, there are some popular satirical programmes that review news and current affairs, such as BBC One’s long-running weekly news review panel show Have I Got News For You and Channel 4’s combination talk-show and news review show The Last Leg.
Radio News Formats
The BBC broadcasts a twice-daily fifteen-minute news flagship news bulletin, Newsbeat, tailored to younger audiences, on its main music-based radio station, Radio 1 and on the BBC Asian Network. The BBC’s remaining music-based radio stations include short hourly news roundups, while Radio 2 has some news review and discussion programmes. BBC Radio 4 is the Corporation’s main spoken-word station, which includes a large amount of news and current affairs programming, including the agenda-setting early-morning Today programme, the Parliamentary review programme Today in Parliament, current-affairs shows like File on 4 and international news on programmes such as From Our Own Correspondent. BBC Radio 5 Live broadcasts news alongside other live coverage such as phone-ins, interviews and sport. The BBC’s radio news programming is replicated in its specialized Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish stations as well as its network of local stations in England. Commercial music radio stations in the UK run short news roundups supplied by Sky News, and several talk radio stations operate nationwide, including talkSPORT and LBC.
Print News Formats
The national press consists of a mix of tabloid, mid-market and broadsheet newspapers, each of which present news in different ways to different target audiences. Each newspaper also includes a range of news formats, from reportage to comment pieces and leader columns. Some significant news and current affairs magazines also circulate, such as the Spectator and the New Statesman as well as the satirical Private Eye, each of which contain commentary and current affairs reporting in their print editions. Local newspapers largely provide localized versions of the output of the national press, but a network of hyperlocal sites (skewing more online than persisting with print) has emerged over the past two decades, providing a varied range of different approaches to newsgathering and reporting.
Online News Formats
Most legacy print and broadcast news providers also now provide a range of different news formats online, and ‘live’ or rolling text-based and multimedia news articles are a popular new means of conveying news. Podcasts are now available from several newspapers (such as the Guardian) and news magazines (such as the Spectator), and online news provision allows for multimedia news stories (typically a mix of text and video clips), though some providers, such as the BBC and the Guardian experiment with more integrated multimedia and interactive storytelling. New types of news sites with significant resources have also emerged, including partisan or commentary sites such as The Canary or UnHerd respectively, campaigning news sites such as openDemocracy and long-form investigative journalism sites like Tortoise. All provide new versions of familiar news formats.
[1] BBC Two also has PSB obligations for current affairs programming, but not for standard news bulletins.
