ABSTRACT
Over the last 20 to 30 years, fixed time television bulletins have operated in a far more competitive journalistic culture, where news is delivered instantly on dedicated news channels, rolling websites and most recently social media platforms. Fixed time bulletins, in this context, appear somewhat antiquated, a relic of the analogue age before the advent of always on, 24-hour news provision. Rather than having a menu of news served at a set time, most people can now instantly serve themselves whatever diet of news they want on broadcast, online or social media platforms. As an Economist (2011) special edition about the future of online news enthusiastically exclaimed, contemporary news is “a far more participatory and social experience…. Readers are being woven into the increasingly complex news ecosystem as sources, participants and distributors”. But for all the ostensible choice, freedom and immediacy of media in the information age – as the Introduction highlighted – fixed time bulletins continue to be the most popular format of news consumption in most advanced democracies, defying predictions that scheduled news will die off.
