ABSTRACT
Television is the world's most powerful communications medium. Television commercials are the most expensive form of advertising, and hard-hearted media buyers will focus on the bottom line and hand over millions of pounds a year because they know how influential television is. Increasingly, surveys show that TV is the primary source of news for many people. Other surveys also show it is much more trusted than newspapers. Logistics - the practical aspects of compiling the story and getting it back to the studio in time for transmission - pose a greater challenge to TV news journalists than those working in either radio or print. The great majority of TV news interviews are recorded in advance of the programme's transmission, then edited into a news report. In TV news it is quite common for researchers, producers or news editors to set up interviews for reporters.
