updates of news, sport and weather. But what is concealed in the
announcement of ‘breaking news’ is the way in which all broadcasted
news is live, in a way that news based on information retrieval is not.
Almost all broadcast news services all over the world have a mirror site on
the World Wide Web, but none of these sites have a specular status, except
insofar as they are consumed as a substitute for a centre of broadcast.
The fact that television news cultivates a synchronous relation with
audiences makes possible the determination of every news announcement
as an event. The event is the activity of the broadcast itself, not the repre-
sentation of something anterior to the broadcast. This is something that
news shares with all ‘events’ in the media.
However, an everyday appreciation of this is often obscured by the
fact that the routine quality of media is ‘programmed’ ahead of time on
the part of producers, and within a representational ontology. It is, by def-
inition, without spontaneity and instantaneity. Insofar as audiences live
their relation to programming within a process model, such an aesthetics
of reception governs their experience of television events.TThhee lliivvee eevveenntt But television programming becomes ordinary and routine,
except in relation to the possibility that it may be interrupted. In such a
case the extraordinary media event itself can become a genre which
claims a double status of ‘liveness’, live in relation to a non-media reality,
and live in relation to a surprising departure from programming. As
Dayan and Katz (1992) theorize this media form:The most obvious difference between media events and other formulas of
genres of broadcasting is that they are, by definition, not routine. In fact,
they are interruptionsof routine; they inter vene in the normal flow of broad-
casting in our lives. Like the holidays that contrast with daily ever yday
routines, television events propose exceptional things to think about, to wit-
ness, and to do. Regular broadcasting is suspended and preempted as we
are guided by a series of special announcements and preludes that trans-
form daily life into something special and, upon the conclusion of the event,
are guided back again. In the most characteristic event, the interruption is
monopolistic, in that all channels switch away from their regularly sched-
uled programming in order to turn to the great event, perhaps leaving a
handful of independent stations outside the consensus. Broadcasting can
hardly make a more dramatic announcement of the importance of what is
about to happen. (403–4)The authority of the broadcast medium is never more heightened
than in the interruptive live event, yet it is also more involving of audi-
ences who may feel a special connection precisely in the singularity and
distinctiveness of the event. The event, which can be as banal as a break-
down in transmission followed by an announcement of the ‘return of normal
programming’, provides a time-stamp that stands out from the ‘pounding’
of regular programming.216 COMMUNICATION THEORYHolmes-06.qxd 2/15/2005 1:03 PM Page 216