Small businesses reporting big stories

The study of the functioning of audio-visual news agencies and production companies working as subcontractors of French television news magazines offers a new perspective on the changes induced by the growing predominance of economic logics in the journalistic space. Based on a corpus of reports, some forty interviews with professionals and three ethnographies studies in agencies, this research first places the development of these programmes and the outsourcing of production in the context of evolving competitive relationships related to the liberalization of the audio-visual sector. It then highlights the refraction of the dependence on broadcasters and the imperative of subcontractors’ profitability into the organization of work and the adjustment of professional dispositions. Finally, the analysis points out the paradoxical effects on representations and working conditions of the diversification of these agencies into the production of long-form programmes and documentaries, including for SVOD platforms.