Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

Television news studios are often taken for granted in the production and distribution of news, but these studios from which reports on everyday life are made are anything but ordinary. What influence does this aesthetics have on the studio’s subject, the news? In this paper I investigate multiple visual aesthetic technologies of television news studios such as ‘LED-panels’, ‘the anchor’, ‘the newsdesk’, ‘maps and globes’ and ‘weather aesthetics’. These elements phrase the semiotics of the television news studio; as well as its influences and the corresponding problems it has to deal with. These elements fall into the code of ‘starship’ aesthetics, which regards the simultaneous simulation and dissimulation of distance in a sterile space while being confronted with its own alienation from ‘the new’. Here is a brief clip from ‘weather aesthetics’: “The news studio, because it creates the change between the new and news, allows for the movement towards future news. It literally provides the weather by drawing points on a line from which what comes next might be fore-cast – thrown-forward. Techno-weather transgressing into the future signifies why the news broadcast and the space industry required the same services. The Metrological Office’s (Met) chief executive Rob Varley, prided it “being the best weather and climate service in the world.” But since 2018, he also regards the Met “the best in the galaxy” since they started ‘providing the weather’ to the European Space Agency.”