On common words and uncommon things An analysis of the comprehensibility of German television news
By Sophie Wannenmacher | How easy is TV news to understand? This paper analyzes thirty news items broadcast between November 2022 and December 2022. The items and presenting analyzed come from the following news programs: The 8 p.m. edition of tagesschau on ARD, Sat.1 Abendnachrichten (renamed :newstime in June 2023 (cf. Weis 2023)), RTL Aktuell, logo! on the KiKa children’s channel and heute at 7 p.m. on ZDF. As well as investigating the programs using three models of comprehensibility, the speaking rate and other language parameters were also analyzed and compared with one another in detail. The analyses show logo! and heute to be the two easiest programs to understand, followed by Sat.1 Nachrichten and RTL Aktuell. tagesschau was the most difficult to understand on average within the period observed.