Czech Republic television: genre and thematic features of TV news in 1989-2021

The author applies the content analysis to study 1608 video news of the Czech TV in 1989, 2005 and 2021. The studies of two categories “Genre” and “Thematic” were conducted. The hypotheses about the increase of negative information in TV news and the rise of entertainment content is tested. Much attention is given to seeking changes in the genres of TV news, which occur as a result of media convergence and the expansion of user-generated content. The greatest genre diversity was found in the modern period (2021), the lowest genre diversity was noted in 1989, when seven out of ten media texts were prepared in the “short note” genre. User-generated content brought only minor changes to the TV news genres. Over time, the role of PR-texts in TV news increases: the number of announcements increases more than tenfold between 1989 and 2021. Previous research indicate that mass media have a tendency to focus on violent and negative content. In the context of the TV news topics, it is demonstrated that nowadays there is an increase to some extent in news on crime and incidents and a slight decrease of the political agenda compared to 1989. Besides, it is reported that the number of sports TV news has significantly decreased, that confirms the trend of differentiation of the audience by TV programs focused on a single subject and specialty (or cable) channels.