Many transmission technologies have popped up during the years, each proving effective in the broadcasting of news.

Take for instance radio and television, both everyday methods the media use to broadcast with. The first ‘true’ radio broadcast was made in 1915, transmitting from New York City to San Francisco, and Virginia to Paris. However, it was in 1933 that radio began to take off, with the introduction of Frequency Modulation (FM radio) by Edwin Howard Armstrong. It radically improved audio signals by controlling the noise static caused by the earth’s atmosphere and electrical equipment. Radio developed further during later years, with Bell Labs inventing the transistor in 1947 and Sony introducing the transistor radio in 1954. Now technologies such as DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) radio are used, but FM still proves a more effective and reliable platform, with not much audible difference.

Television on the other hand, similarly to radio, was developed by numerous people to contribute to one idea: ‘an electron beam scanning a picture in horizontal lines.’ In 1939, commercial television was launched by David Sarnoff; the vice president of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). Since then, television has undergone major changes; from black and white to colour, from analogue to digital, and from Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) to Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) and Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED).

Radio is an effective platform for keeping people up to date with the news while they are on the move. Every production car now has a radio as standard; in fact it’s a consumer essential. Commercial music stations usually broadcast news on the top of the hour, with some stations focussing on it for 24 hours a day (such as LBC for example). Television operates in a similar manner, with news usually being broadcast on the top of the hour, and some stations broadcasting dedicated 24 hour news coverage (such as BBC News and Sky News).

The internet has also proved to be a fantastic platform for news. Websites have become more content rich as new web standards have been implemented, and therefore collate different media more effectively; such as text, photographs and video for instance. The internet also enables you to pick out content that you’re interested in, which not a lot of other media allows you to easily do. The BBC News website is a fine example of how a news website should look, attracting millions of visitors a day.

Mobile phones are also now an emerging platform, with devices such as the iPhone leading the way. Smartphone’s can now load websites identically to a traditional computer, and with mobile applications such as Sky News and ITN, content can now be delivered as stories are breaking. You can even watch BBC iPlayer on some devices, streaming BBC News broadcasts.

"In the twenty years Sky News has been with us the world has spun a few times and things have changed apace, most noticeably the technology now used to bring us the news." 
Sir Michael Parkinson (Sky News: 20 Years of Breaking News - Published 2009)

Now, onto the question as to whether technology has changed news delivery. The answer is an obvious yes. Without technological developments 24 hour television news would never have launched, and services such as BBC News Online wouldn't have soared in popularity. We are living in a new digital age, where people want access to news 24 hours a day, wherever they are in the world.