Content Osmosis in Television Programmes: The Inclusion of News in the Spanish Magazines Espejo Público and Mañaneros

Television formats are undergoing a redefinition of the audiovisual panorama marked by digitisation and the decrease in audiences. In this context, news coverage at times of special interest is an opportunity to regain relevance, and for this reason the morning magazine programmes are taking on the broadcasting of currently prevalent news, intervening in subjects traditionally reserved for news programmes. This paper analyses the news content of TV magazines in a context of hybridisation of genres that has blurred the acknowledged boundaries between the definitions of television programmes. To achieve this, we study the topics on the agenda and how the news is dealt with that is included in the two leading formats among the private and public channels with the biggest audiences in Spain: Espejo Público on Antena 3 and Mañaneros on Televisión Española. The results show that there is a process we call “news osmosis”, whereby the news is treated in a spectacular way, yet incorporating the language and aesthetics typical of the formality of news programmes. In this adaptation, the magazines impose themselves on the narration of the news scoop while restricting the thematic agenda, leaning towards a kind of reductionism in which the private channels choose to prioritise political conflict while the public channels concentrate on current incidents, understood here as newsworthy events of public interest (crimes or accidents)