International and Pan-European News Channels: An overview

The European television industry has evolved in a dramatic way since the beginning of the 90?s. The number of channels has been multiplied by 12, the share of the public television decreased to around 30 %, and the number of thematic channels is in thousands. In this general landscape, generalist TV channels (public or private), that still hold the bulk of the audience are nevertheless losing ground. In the same time the trust of their viewers in the quality of the information transmitted in the news and political magazines is strongly decreasing. This global situation opened a window of opportunity for the development of news and political thematic channels, specifically those with a pan-European approach (PETV), like Euronews, CNN, BBC world, Bloomberg, etc., as well as to national channels with an international approach like TV5, Deutsche Welle...). This paper analyse this evolution as well as the prospective for the development of such channels in the framework of the general European Television stations landscape.