BarcelonaNew step to create a large, unique editorial office at the Catalan Audiovisual Media Corporation (CCMA). The company has announced today that it is launching the transformation of its information model, which will crown the first quarter of 2025. The most outstanding innovation is a bold change of brand. In the same way that we want to end up doing away with TV3 to establish 3Cat as the name for both linear television and the platform, the entire news offer will now have a single name, 3CatInfo, regardless of the window in which be consumed This sums up the name 3/24 that has been associated with the Corporation’s television and digital information for the past two decades.
The renovation involves creating an information platform through a new website and a new app that reinforces the commitment to video and audio, that is to say, that hybridizes the current Catalunya Informació and 3/24. Digital technology must enable the opening of specific social media channels and newsletters designed for new audiences.
Another of the changes will be spaces. The TV news and programs like the mornings i Més324 they will share the same set, to reinforce the transversal image. This will mean building a new information studio, equipped with new IP technology, and pioneering robotic cameras. The colors that have characterized the backgrounds of recent years will give way to physical screens, including a large vertical one designed to be able to export videos for digital consumption on mobile phones.
“3Cat is committed to a model that responds to current and future challenges such as the overabundance of content, brands and offers, the proliferation of fake news, the growth of digital consumption and the decline in interest in information”, explains the Corporation in a press release. 3/24 marked a high in 2019 with a screen share of 2.2% and maintained good data also in the first year of covid. It has subsequently lost approximately a quarter of the share and is currently trading at 1.5% after hitting a decade low of 1.3% last year.
At the moment, there has been no debate on what the faces of this new stage will be, but we must expect a mixture of continuity and renewal.
A slow management project
The idea of a joint newsroom has historically floated in the Corporation, but the staff has been reluctant, especially in the case of radio, because we fear losing proximity to the news if they lose the headquarters at Diagonal 614 in favor of Sant Joan Despí Some steps that have been taken in this regard consist of creating territorial delegations that work indiscriminately for radio and television, and digital. But the idea of a single wording raised in 2015 was aborted because it did not receive enough consensus in the Council of Government.
From the representatives of the workers, the movement is seen with some misgivings. In particular, it is feared that it could lead to a thinning of the editorial staff: “From a labor point of view, it is not seen that betting on ‘transversal’ informants is ‘optimizing resources’, as they say, and therefore reducing template?”, wrote the Union of Journalists of Catalonia (SPC) in a tweet this week. And they were also alert to the danger of wanting journalists to work indiscriminately for many channels, with different techniques: “Have they not yet understood the differences between TV, radio and digital narratives? Above all, that they save the xist that they want everyone to do everything, “but not simultaneously”. Thank you, generous.”
At the parliamentary control committee in September, the president of the Corporation, Rosa Romà, defended the project and assured that it was being worked “from below, with the participation of professionals”, and that it was done “understanding the need for transformation and to avoid the duplication of functions that is sometimes generated”.
