Social networks have altered how viewers watch television and consume information. This new context has obliged broadcasters to adapt their practices to reach viewers in all platforms. In this article, we focus on how the evening news programmes from the general-interest DTT channels in the five main European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom) appeal to their social audience. This concept, although ambiguous, refers to the activity of viewers on social networks in relation to the contents broadcast by the television industry in its multiple forms. We analyse both the screen strategies and their activity on their official Twitter accounts. Although the evening news is the anchor of the prime time and one of the main assets to instil the channels with prestige and influence, the conclusions point to a certain neglect of the social audience from the industry in these key programmes. But mostly, our research reveals how the specificities of the format and the nature of the content distinguish the evening news from other live TV shows.

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This article is a result of the research project From hegemony to competition: transformations in the program strategies of European public televisions in the last 30 years (UE5) (PGC2018-094863-B-100, MCIU-Feder).

This paper investigates the role of European Public Service Media (PSM) in the commissioning and scheduling of local series over the past three decades. With a comparative approach between the main European television markets (Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain), the schedules of 30 seasons of 25 general-interest channels have been analysed to explore how the changes in the markets have altered the role of public channels as promoters of domestic fiction and local culture. The study shows a clear division along a Northern European axis with a large, uninterrupted commissioning of locally produced fiction, while Southern European public corporations have had a lower, more erratic approach. Despite this difference, all European PSM organisations analysed have maintained and increased the volume of local series titles during the last decade despite the appearance of portfolio DTT channels and transnational SVOD services, in contrast to commercial corporations.

En este artículo se muestran los resultados de una investigación empírica sobre estrategias de apelación en pantalla que piden el uso de las redes sociales durante los programas más vistos de los canales de TDT en general en Francia, Alemania, Italia, España y Reino Unido en 2016-2017. El objetivo es identificar cómo se busca la atención de las audiencias sociales durante la emisión y qué forma adquieren estos llamamientos en la narrativa y estructura de los formatos. El análisis de contenido muestra los recursos y estrategias utilizadas, las diferencias según país, propiedad del canal y género de programación, y el uso hegemónico de hashtags y las estrategias únicas de info-show en canales comerciales