Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Tabloid Television

As the term suggests, tabloid originates in print journalism where it refers to a diminutive newspaper format. In keeping with their ease of handling, tabloid-sized newspapers are generally regarded as having little engagement with “serious” news, instead exhibiting a predominant concern with trivia and sensation. Just as tabloid newspapers are regarded as dealing with “less serious” news in an attempt to increase their market share, such changes in television have come to be referred to by the term tabloidization. Other related terms are newszak, dumbing-down, infotainment, and, less disapprovingly, personalization and democratization. As is clear from these terms, there are different values attached to this process, which can be seen as detrimental to journalism, or, more positively, as a key driver of the masses to news media.

Development

Across Western media, many believe there is an underlying obligation for media, largely seen as part of the public sphere, to foster citizenship and civic responsibility. Since the 1980s, however, increasing commercial pressure in the form of competition from cable and satellite outlets, the information industries' growing internationalism, and a slackening of government and state regulation have threatened this public service media model. This has resulted in a blurring of the boundaries between public and private, information and entertainment. Recent years have seen a conflation of news and talk programs as journalists shift to being journalist-hosts in studio-based shows that feature audience-centered discussions of topical events. Indeed, there has been such a narrowing between news and entertainment that news/entertainment talk shows had become major forums for presidential candidates in the United States by 1992. For example, Bill Clinton made a saxophone-playing appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show in 1992, and more recently during the 2008 presidential election, candidates have appeared on shows such as The View (ABC) and Saturday Night Live (NBC).

In 1995, the year's “national news event,” extensively covered not only on talk shows but also on news programs, was the O. J. Simpson trial, during which television news programs often carried clips of reaction on the talk shows and talk shows carried clips of the footage gleaned from news programs. News merged with and became dependent upon entertainment. Increasingly, it is the norm for “serious” broadcast news reporting to include stories about the personal lives of celebrities among the top stories, and for politicians to readily appear on such talk shows as Oprah Winfrey. This increased focus on personalities, one component of tabloidization, has increasingly become a feature of news and current affairs programming as broadcasters seek new audiences. “Newszak” refers to formerly informational programs, such as 60 Minutes (CBS), that have developed more in line with traditional notions of entertainment. Thus, while the topics covered in tabloid television can be seen as entertainment-focused, tabloidization also indicates a series of journalistic practices.

Emphasis on the Personal

Part of this process is related to language, where there is a tendency towards more informality, characterized by the use of humor and colloquial speech. There has been an increase in the use of conversational styles in the media since the late 1970s, which has had the positive effect of allowing more people to better understand the complex social and political issues covered by the media. Linguistically, this informality can be as simple as the use of “Hi” rather than “Good evening” to greet an interlocutor, or an exchange of unscripted, personal anecdotes among news anchors between stories (often dubbed “happy talk”). The viewer overhears personal comments about a journalist's life and thus may regard them as more familiar and trustworthy. A well-known example of a journalist that built a sense of empathy with her audience is longtime NBC morning show host Katie Couric, whose private tragedies served to emphasize her personal appeal and made her one of the most popular television figures of her generation. Yet her switch to become evening news anchor on CBS did not allow her the flexibility on the air she had long enjoyed, and her audiences dwindled. Drawing upon a similar focus on personality, when CBS correspondent Kimberley Dozier was badly injured while reporting from Baghdad in 2006, she returned to the network a year later to make a documentary about her experiences. This example of a correspondent becoming the story enabled her to produce personally informed reports that highlighted the experiences of Iraqi people as well as U.S. service personnel.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution