News for adolescents: Mission impossible? An evaluation of Flemish television news aimed at teenagers HEIDI VANDEBOSCH, ALEXANDER DHOEST and HILDE VAN DEN BULCK E-mails: heidi.vandebosch@ua.ac.be; alexander.dhoest@ua.ac.be; hilde.vandenbulck@ua.ac.be. Abstract Media companies as well as governments launch initiatives to reverse the decline in news consumption by adolescents. Since 2007, the Flemish gov- ernment has been funding newscasts for adolescents on two commercial channels, Zoom on VTM and Jam on VT4. In 2008, these programs were evaluated using in-depth interviews with producers, content analysis of 30 episodes of each program, an analysis of the ratings for the first season, and an online survey among 663 adolescents aged 10 to 18. Results indicate that there is a lot of variation within this group, making it hard to please them with a single program. Zoom addresses slightly older adolescents (12-18) with a program closely following the “adult” news, while Jam provides younger adolescents (10-16) with more digestible and entertain- ing news. Most respondents in the survey liked both programs, among other things because of the strong presence of adolescents on screen. Yet adoles- cent viewing figures are extremely low, mainly due to the inappropriate place in the schedule. Keywords: news, adolescents, evaluation, in-depth interviews, online survey, content analysis Introduction Young people (in particular adolescents) are notoriously hard to reach through traditional news media such as newspapers, radio and TV (Lauf, 2001; McMane, 2007; Patterson, 2007). This is true in comparison to both older people and former generations, which suggests it is partly an age effect and partly a cohort effect (Raeymaeckers, 2004). The age effect implies that with age, young people acquire a stronger need for news and increased cognitive capacities to consume it, which indeed is the case with former generations. The cohort effect implies that the current Communications 34 (2009), 125-148 03412059/2009/034-0125 DOI 10.1515/COMM.2009.010  Walter de Gruyter Brought to you by | University of Iowa Libraries Authenticated Download Date | 5/30/15 10:30 PM