"Tagesschau" fights viewer decline with more sport and abroad

 In the fight against the decline in viewership, "Tagesschau" boss Heiner Hug is focusing on "more foreign affairs and more sport", as can be read in the Sonntagszeitung. According to Hug, foreign topics have been somewhat neglected from time to time. Sports reporting is also to be expanded: "We don't just want results, but more background and preview reports." The "Tagesschau" boss wants to promote "breaking down" in particular: The individual aspects of a topic are to be separated from each other more frequently by intervening moderations. Another program innovation was buried shortly after its introduction at the beginning of January: the summary of the three most important news items at the end of the program, called Sommaire. Hug's reasons for the discontinuation include the negative reactions of viewers - they had accused the program makers of "selling them as morons".
With the renewed restructuring of the program, Hug is reacting to a massive decline in viewership: In 2002, an average of more than one million people watched the "Tagesschau" main edition, last year it was still 800,000.
However, viewers would not turn to news from other channels, Hug is quoted as saying in the Sonntagszeitung. The competition is mainly home-made, for example from the news channel SF Info.