The impact of multimedia convergence on the newsrooms of the regional public radio and television services. A study case

Abstract

The economical, technological and consumption related factors have encouraged media companies to begin business and professional processes for change which aim to make the most of the production, optimizing it. The newsrooms of these media have thus started to perform new ways of planning, creating and distributing the content, which promote the confluence of different media platforms (print press/radio-television and the web), giving rise to a multi-platform and multimedia content strategy. Even if originally the research on media convergence has focused mainly on press companies, in the last years there is a growing interest for analyzing convergence developments also in the broadcasting media context. In Europe, concerns about the evolution of Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) and the specific implications of the convergence for this (Ferrell and Hujanen, 2003; Ferrell and Bardoel, 2007; Bardoel and D’Haenens, 2008) have lead to explore their convergent experience at the newsroom level (NRK, BBC Scotland, VRT, CCMA). In view of it, and on account of the need of carrying out further studies on cases of all sizes, regardless their scope (Erdal, 2009; Saltzis and Dickinson, 2008; García and Carvajal, 2008), this article approaches to the experience of a regional public radio and television, the Basque Euskal Irrati Telebista (EITB). This can be considered a representative case whose analysis offers results which could be constructive for other companies of similar characteristics and scope.