Abstract
Television news (especially foreign news) is under constant threat of being replaced by live sporting events or film award ceremonies, as hard news is increasingly substituted by soft news, infotainment, or popular journalism. These developments are indicators of structural forces acting to change the nature of television and journalism in Germany. However, the current media crisis has revealed that these forces are indicative of changing structures globally that are leading to a gradual disappearance of foreign news from TV channels. This paper aims to establish a theoretical setting that describes the structural characteristics of this disappearance of foreign news and its relevant mechanisms. Accordingly, this paper outlines a theoretical model for analysing the mechanisms of economisation (where economic factors rather than editorial standards drive news reporting), based on differentiation between the media organisation and newsrooms as the prominent organisational expression of journalism. The differentiation is based on the different functions and performances of media organisations and newsrooms. The (metaphorical) assumption is that journalism sells the news to media organisations, while they pay for the news (via resources), one reason for the disappearance of foreign news stems from the changing rules of the business of the media.