News broadcasting

News broadcasting is the medium of broadcasting of various news events and other information via television, radio or internet in the field of broadcast journalism. The content is usually either produced locally in a radio studio or television studio newsroom, or by a broadcast network. It may also include additional material such as sports coverage, weather forecasts, traffic reports, commentary and other material that the broadcaster feels is relevant to their audience.

Television news

Television news refers to disseminating current events via the medium of television. A "news bulletin" or a "newscast" are television programs lasting from seconds to hours that provide updates on world, national, regional or local news events. There are numerous providers of broadcast news content such as NBC, CNN or Fox News, as well as numerous programs that regularly provide this content such as NBC Nightly News. Television news is very image-based, showing video footage of many of the events that are reported; still photography is also used in reporting news stories, although not as much in recent years as in the early days of broadcast television. Television channels may provide news bulletins as part of a regularly scheduled news program. Less often, television shows may be interrupted or replaced by breaking news reports ("news flashes") to provide news updates on events of great importance.

Independent radio

Independent radio indicates a radio station that is run in a manner different from usual for the country it broadcasts in. In countries where there exist government-run radio stations that served as the primary or only the variety of licensed broadcaster, the term independent radio generally means commercial radio stations which are not operated by the government, and thus independent of the government.

Conversely, in places such as the United States, where commercial broadcasters are the norm, independent radio is sometimes used to refer to non-commercial educational radio stations that are primarily supported by listener contributions and are thus independent of commercial advertising concerns. With the advent of large commercial broadcast radio network companies, and the general adoption of the term public radio in the United States to refer to non-religious radio-oriented listener-supported stations, the term has also been used to refer to commercial radio stations that are run independently of the large radio conglomerates.

Independent Radio News

Independent Radio News provides a service of news bulletins, audio and copy to commercial radio stations in the United Kingdom and beyond.

The managing director of IRN is Tim Molloy, who succeeded long-term MD John Perkins in November 2009. Perkins had been MD of IRN since 1989.

IRN has three main shareholders: Global Radio (54.6%), Bauer Radio (22.3%) and ITN (19.7%).

History and background

IRN launched on 8 October 1973 with the first bulletin read at 0600 by Australian newsreader Ken Guy on the opening morning of Britain's first commercial radio station, LBC.

IRN was based at LBC studios in Gough Square, just off Fleet Street in Central London. The service was funded by cash payments from subscribing radio stations.

Computer technology was introduced in 1985 and in 1987, the Newslink advertising scheme was launched which funded the service and provided cash dividends to client statons.

In 1989, satellite distribution of bulletins and audio was introduced and this was also the year that IRN and LBC moved into new studios on Hammersmith Road in West London. The satellite service was managed by Satellite Media Services who were based on the ground floor of the Euston Tower.

Radio News

Radio News was an American monthly technology magazine published from 1919 to 1971. The magazine was started by Hugo Gernsback as a magazine for amateur radio enthusiasts, but it evolved to cover all the technical aspects to radio and electronics. In 1929 a bankruptcy forced the sale of Gernsback's publishing company to B. A. Mackinnon. In 1938 Ziff-Davis Publishing acquired the magazines.

Gernsback Era

In 1904 Hugo Gernsback established Electro Importing Company to sell radio components and electrical supplies by mail order. The catalogs had detailed instructions on projects like a wireless telegraph outfit and were the predecessor of his first magazine, Modern Electrics (April 1908). In May 1913 he started another magazine, The Electrical Experimenter. The magazines would have Gernsback's bold predictions of the future as well as fiction. In 1926 he started the magazine Amazing Stories and coined the term "scientifiction" which became science fiction.

Gernsback was an enthusiastic supporter of amateur radio. During the First World War the US government placed a ban on amateur radio and Gernsback led the campaign to lift it. Gernsback started a magazine devoted to radio, Radio Amateur News (July 1919.) The title was shortened to Radio News in July 1920.

Radio

Radio is the use of radio waves is to carry information, such as sound, by systematically modulating some property of electromagnetic energy waves transmitted through space, such as their amplitude, frequency, phase, or pulse width. When radio waves strike an electrical conductor, the oscillating fields induce an alternating current in the conductor. The information in the waves can be extracted and transformed back into its original form.

Radio systems need a transmitter to modulate (change) some property of the energy produced to impress a signal on it, for example using amplitude modulation or angle modulation (which can be frequency modulation or phase modulation). Radio systems also need an antenna to convert electric currents into radio waves, and vice versa. An antenna can be used for both transmitting and receiving. The electrical resonance of tuned circuits in radios allow individual stations to be selected. The electromagnetic wave is intercepted by a tuned receiving antenna. A radio receiver receives its input from an antenna and converts it into a form usable for the consumer, such as sound, pictures, digital data, measurement values, navigational positions, etc. Radio frequencies occupy the range from a 3 kHz to 300 GHz, although commercially important uses of radio use only a small part of this spectrum.