Although time devoted to news and information has been increasing in free-to-air television programming, the presence of entertainment and of the fiction area is still much stronger, particular in commercial channels. The fiction consists largely of popular soap operas we call “telenovelas”, originating in Brazil but now being produced in Portugal with great public success. This trend is clear when we look at the comparative shares – measured in terms of airtime devoted to each item – offered by the main channels (see Table 10).
[supsystic-tables id=77]
News and information programmes, in the main television channels, are almost reduced only to the evening newscasts (20:00). Other news formats (interviews, debates, in-depth reporting, etc.) are very much absent, except for some specific situations in public television (RTP1 and RTP2). Besides this, the evening news bulletins, as said before, include a great deal of soft news, fait-divers, shocking reporting, and trivial subjects.
Each of the three main television stations also has a channel exclusively devoted to 24/7 news and information: SIC Notícias (a subsidiary of SIC), RTP3 (a subsidiary of RTP), and TVI24 (a subsidiary of TVI). There is a fourth channel, CMTV, belonging to the media group Cofina, that is also devoted mostly to news with a rather popular or sensationalist tone, which leads this segment. However, all of them are distributed through cable and are paid for, which means they reach about two-thirds of Portuguese households, and all with low audience rates, when compared with the free-to-air channels. This limitation notwithstanding, those channels have a more diverse set of news formats, including many debates, extensive interviews, political commentaries, and special features.
The online editions of traditional media, in particular, are developing more innovative news formats online, and multimedia approaches such as infographics, podcasts, and videos are expanding.
As for newspapers, the trend goes more towards popularisation, soft news, and light products, even among quality papers. The differences between newspapers are not as evident as they used to be. The free dailies grew very quickly in the years 2006–2008, but they have been quickly decreasing in circulation and now only a small and rather irrelevant one is left (Destak).
