Resumen de The influence of Infotainment in the Role of TV Newscasts’ Main Characters

Belén Monclús, Miguel Vicente Mariño

• Newscasts are one of the most easily recognisable elements of any TV channel. In Spain there is a tough battle for the audience between all open air stations in this field. Despite the increasing quantity of available newscasts, their content is still walking towards a higher homogenization (Vicente-Mariño & Monclús, 2009). Within this wider process of convergence, infotainment appears as a clear trend, following a similar pattern as the one described by Thussu (2008). This paper is focused on the role played by the main characters of broadcasted news, as they are a key part of any newscast.

  One can detect this transition in the Spanish newscasts from a traditional way of reporting daily news to a new combination between anonymous and famous. Blurred boundaries are not enough to keep the distance and the way they are presented is sometimes biased. By means of a content analysis of six Spanish TV channels during a sample week, this paper presents the combination of these two social groups. TV channel’s ideological position and thematic section are the two main cleavages leading to alternative models, but all of them devoted more space to anonymous than some years ago (Langer, 1998; Prado, 2003).