news-single-imgcaption" style="width:223px">Björn Staschen: “Avoiding the news requires active action. The passive media user is caught in the linear course of the day.” (Photo: Johannes Wulf)
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When it was still possible, before the pandemic, I spent a two-week vacation in Florida with my family. We rolled a few hundred miles of freeways to explore towns, alligators, and mussel beds. On one of those long car rides, the minute hand on the dashboard clock was approaching twelve. And I started by tuning the FM radio in our rental car to a station that was broadcasting news on the hour. I searched and searched, the minutes passed. When it was a minute or two past the hour, I gave up: I couldn’t find a station among the multitude of pop, country, and talk stations near Miami that would reliably get me news on the hour. The music just kept going. That irritated me.
Apparently, linear media are much less regulated in the USA than here in Germany: In this country, I’m used to hearing the news on the hour – and I can also find it when I search on the frequency scale. Almost all stations offer news, not just the public ones. State media authorities link their frequency assignments for commercial broadcasters to program standards. This also means that terrestrial or cable broadcasters should offer news if they want to get hold of a frequency.
News avoidance requires active action
Conversely, it’s also damn hard not to hear the news in Germany: Anyone who listens to linear radio in the car on the way to work or in the bathroom while showering in the morning will inevitably stumble across the news. Like the bear’s head in the German New Year’s Eve hit “Dinner for One”: The news always gets in the way, every hour on the hour, and if you don’t take a detour, you just stumble.
That also means: If you don’t want to hear the news, you have to consciously switch off. You can choose from the few stations that broadcast their news five minutes before the hour. But these stations also send messages. If you don’t want to hear any information, you have to consciously avoid it, otherwise it will trickle into your ears like music, competitions and advertising before and after. News avoidance requires active action. The passive media user is caught in the linear flow of the day.
This is no coincidence, it is intentional: When politicians drafted our broadcasting regulations, they consciously opted for the juxtaposition of information and entertainment. The term “full program” can be found in the State Media Treaty, which is struggling to lag behind current developments such as digitization. And even in full private programs, according to Section 25, “the significant political, ideological and social forces and groups (…) must have an appropriate say.” The goal is diversity of opinion, and that cannot be created with a musical tapestry.
Dream odds thanks to football
The juxtaposition of entertainment and information works. Because if “Tagesthemen” and “heute journal” broadcast reduced editions during the half-time break during the European or World Cup, this is not a makeshift solution: the bosses of the newsrooms look forward to these ratings boosters. And the editors adjust their plans and try to keep the particularly large and heterogeneous audience in mind when choosing topics. Because the millions of football fans who have gathered in front of the television stay tuned in – despite the pee break – even at half-time.
“If we approach this change through the eyes of those who created our media order to ensure diversity of opinion, then regulation urgently needs to follow suit.”
In this way, news achieve dream ratings, up to 24 million people watch such half-time news. Maybe some will get a beer, maybe the others will chat – but basically these football fans “stumble” over the news in large numbers. And that’s a good thing, because it contributes to information and the formation of opinions. This is the only way to get messages on the topic of small talk at the garden fence or party talk at a football night – especially if they are produced well, i.e. appropriate to the target group.
From my point of view, we did it right in Germany (and in other European countries): Our media regulation (also) means that news is part of the daily media menu, unlike in the USA, where National Public Radio (NPR) with its Allied regional stations broadcasts more on the fringes of society, while the center is often not or only insufficiently reached by news offers. However: In Germany, too, linear media use is steadily declining. And that also reduces the chance that people in Germany will stumble across the news. The ability to form an informed opinion is in danger – and with it our democratic system.
“Binge Watching” as a business model
The long-term study “Mass communication” by ARD and ZDF, which has been examining media use in Germany since the 1960s, already shows that 80 percent of the 14 to 29 age group listen to their music via streaming platforms such as YouTube and Spotify. Only 68 percent also use the radio – and the trend is falling. There are many such observations and studies – media use is shifting to non-linear channels at the expense of linear broadcasting. In my view, there are many challenges in this development that media policy and society should face up to. One has to do with the fact that people “stumbled” over the news in yesterday’s media world: Because streaming services like Spotify, YouTube, Netflix or Amazon Prime are doing everything they can to ensure that exactly that doesn’t happen.
“Binge Watching” is the business model of the new media giants, users should stay tuned as long as possible. It’s not for nothing that the countdown at the end of a series episode is rarely enough to press “stop” on the remote control or cell phone in good time: “The next episode starts in 15 seconds.” The streaming services are doing everything they can to make media use as uninterrupted as possible, longer and longer and longer.
“From my point of view, we did it right in Germany: Our media regulation (also) means that news is part of the daily media menu, unlike in the USA.”
The goal: no one should stumble. With Netflix, Spotify & Co., active users are needed to end the stream of the same series over and over again. And it needs the active user who goes looking for news.
This is the decisive paradigm shift in media use: in the linear media world, those who wanted to avoid news had to take action: act so as not to consume any news. In the non-linear world, active users are needed for news to be consumed.
Diversity of opinion and freedom of information at risk
If we approach this change through the eyes of those who created our media order to ensure diversity of opinion, then regulation urgently needs to follow suit at this point. At the time, media policy deliberately focused on full programs in order to reach as many people as possible with information and diverse opinions. And no one will disagree with the notion that diversity of opinion and freedom of information are in jeopardy now more than ever.
Incidentally, those who broadcast on linear channels in a strictly regulated framework, whether public or commercial, have a serious strategic disadvantage: they have to meet the requirements for a full program, while Netflix can deliver individual media fare to German households, which in case of doubt can be completely is free of information. RTL and ZDF have to regularly broadcast news (and finance their production), while Amazon Prime does not have to fulfill this obligation.
Some might argue that Netflix also produces high-quality documentaries and Spotify produces sophisticated podcasts. That’s right. Only those who want to see them have to actively search for them. Here lies the subtle but crucial difference.
The activists of the “Humane Technology” movement are calling for the autoplay of the next episode to be switched off in series streaming. Against media addiction and “binge watching”: Humane, humane technology means not providing for every possible temptation in the design, but rather avoiding it as much as possible.
The activists of a society with a wide range of opinions should accordingly demand that non-linear media actively offer news and information – a kind of autoplay for the daily news. Users must also stumble on non-linear platforms. They have to actively choose and retrieve their remote control from the sofa cushions, unplug their cell phones and press “I don’t want to watch the news” to avoid receiving information. Just as they have to actively switch in linear channels if they don’t want any news.
It would be conceivable for information content financed by broadcasting fees to be available to all providers for linking. Then Netflix, Spotify & Co. would not have to get involved in the expensive production of news and information, even if they could undoubtedly do so in view of their commercial success. But these are details. What is important is the obligatory, regular offer: “Here is your information.” Or: “Now the news is coming!” In a figurative sense, the bearskins of “Dinner for One” must also be rolled out in the non-linear world, including their heads: so that we users in the role of the butler keep stumbling over journalistic news and information in the best sense of the word.
At its core, media regulation must ensure that news continues to find its users. In this direction. And users do not have to actively search for their messages.
Time is running out. Because we already allow social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to act worldwide, which only follow commercial decisions. How they influence elections and other democratic processes has become clear at least since the riots in the US Capitol. If linear media, in which information still has its place, simultaneously lose importance and regulation does not give them this place in non-linear media, our democracy will have a hard time.
Björn Staschen works as a consultant, coach and project manager. Previously he was a reporter for radio, television and online media, reported as ARD television correspondent from London and presented NDR Info.
This article was created in a cooperation between Vocer and the journalist. The contribution will appear in the book “How we make journalism more resilient”. Publishers are Vocer co-founder Stephan Weichert and journalist editor-in-chief Matthias Daniel.
Overview: Everyone follows
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