ABSTRACT
The group includes the coverage of catastrophes, national predicaments, festivities, and public anniversaries, important speeches by political leaders or parliamentary debates, etc. As a rule, events of this second type are mostly broadcast in an improvised way, since they are assumed to be of particular or even urgent interest to the public. The regular program schedule is then abandoned in favor of the rhythm of events. Since the late 1950s, when AMPEX developed electronic video-recording facilities, preproduction techniques have allowed for an effective control of the television program. Individuals living in modern societies are in a certain sense subjected to a permanent process of initiation through media topicalities. Media events generate a cultural climate or mood which may become decisive for a period of our lives. ‘The producer's choice becomes a composition, a narration, a discursive reunion of images, analytically detached from the context of an entire series of simultaneous and overlapping events”.
