Newsbreakers: the night and day brigade

Cable and satellite viewers can catch all the latest stories at any time. The Independent's television critic Thomas Sutcliffe assesses the competition

CNN

Owned by: Turner Broadcasting, part of Time-Warner

Hours per day: 24 hours

The grandfather of them all - launched in 1980 when Ted Turner converted a failing Atlanta cable station into the first 24-hour news channel. CNN came of age in the first Gulf War, when it scooped its competitors with live coverage of the bombing of Baghdad. It can still claim that it is available to more than a billion viewers worldwide in 212 countries. The look of most serious 24-hour operations are variations on that pioneered by CNN, as is the Chinese-torture looping of the content, the inevitable result of any attempt to "feed the beast" of round-the-clock news. Ludicrous on-screen bric-a-brac includes the sportbar, the newsbar and the bizbar.

FOX

Owned by: Fox Entertainment Group (82% owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation)

Hours per day: 24 hours

The Neo-con's favourite news-gatherer carries the on-screen boast "Fair and Balanced". It's opponents say "The Communists had Pravda - Republicans have Fox". Launched in 1996 Fox's brand of cheerleading patriotism took a sharp upward turn with 9/11 and it is now unchallenged in its flag-draped bellicosity. Analysis about the progress of normalisation in Iraq is quite likely to be offered by an American army colonel. It even replaced the term "suicide bombers" with "homicide bombers" in case the former aroused sympathy among its wussier viewers.

BBC NEWS 24

Owned by: BBC

Hours per day: 24 hours

The BBC's entry in this now crowded market had a troubled infancy, slow to find an audience at home and abroad. However it recently pulled ahead of its chief British rival Sky News in 8 weeks out of 10 when the measure was 15-minute weekly share. Its slogan is "If it happens, it's here - 24 hours a day", but rivals tend to point out that it's often here just a little later, traditional BBC news values prizing accuracy of information above the last-one-on-air's-a-cissy approach. Plenty of red on screen and staffed with reasonably personable newsreaders. Informal banter is encouraged and occasionally they get very frisky and have a threesome with the sports reporter.

EURONEWS

Owned by: A consortium of 19 European public broadcasters

Hours per day: 24 hours (seven languages)

Chilling viewing for those who believe that the European Union is a plot to replace a vivid patchwork of national cultures with a flavourless superstate. After 30 minutes you begin to wonder if a neutron bomb has gone off in its HQ, leaving the technical equipment functioning but killing all the staff. This is because EuroNews has no on-screen presenters at all - allowing its reports and interviews with obscure EEC bureaucrats to be re-dubbed for different audiences. You would have to be very passionate about the decor of Strasbourg meeting rooms to find it compelling. Such viewers exist; it gets bigger audiences than CNN in Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

BLOOMBERG

Owned by: Bloomberg

Hours per day: 24 hours

"Essential to your morning" its slogan claims, but only if you've just woken up in a Frankfurt business hotel and need to know what the Deutschmark is doing against the Dong. Bloomburg has 10 networks worldwide and claims to reach more than 200 million homes. Its basic aesthetic is a hybrid of a computerised trading screen and a 3G video phone. It offers two stock exchange streamers and 6 or 7 constantly updated statistics ("tools for power players and serious investors"), which tellingly stay on screen during the advertising. Regular scoops on price sensitive information. Its grimly extended on-screen interviews resemble Bulgarian state television in the Seventies.

AL JAZEERA

Owned by: The Government of Qatar

Hours per day: 24 hours

First port of call for hostage-takers, executioners and enemies of the Great Satan. The channel's virtual monopoly on jihadist freelancers - and a news culture which is reluctant to airbrush the bloodier consequences of contemporary warfare - has resulted in regular accusations that it is an "Al-Quaeda mouthpiece" from Coalition spinners. Its commitment to independent comment and news has also made it unpopular with governments across the region and accounts for sparse advertising - Western companies might approve of free-speech in theory, but not if it's bad for business in Syria. 35 million Arab viewers regularly watch it, and Osama Bin Laden knows it.

SKY NEWS

Owned by: BSkyB (35% owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp)

Hours per day: 24 hours

News flashes arrive on the Sky News screen with an audible whoosh, just one of several brash details that distinguishes Sky's tabloid manner from the more buttoned-up style of BBC News 24. Everything on Sky is a notch or two louder than News 24. The content also obeys some red-top imperatives. Offered the choice between leading on Blair's apology or Beckham's, Sky went with the football. The Sky News Ticker runs constantly along the bottom of the screen. Much of the presentation is done standing, from various points in the Sky News Centre - a large brick shed in Isleworth.

BBC PARLIAMENT

Owned by: BBC

Hours per day: When the House is sitting

For those who like their politics raw and unprocessed - and for leather fetishists. Broadcasts from the House of Commons regularly offer the sight of acres of green leather, those from the House of Lords a slightly more modest square footage of red upholstery. It also offers a link-up with C-Span at the weekend to cover Washington politics, a weekly programme about European politics, and one that reviews events in chambers and Parliamentary committees. Cruelly it has to share Prime Ministers Questions with every other channel. As a result viewing figures are not exactly huge, but its most dedicated fans - MPs - have an unusual degree of clout with BBC executives.

CNBC

Owned by: NBC

Hours per day: 24 hours

Bloomberg's chief competitor for the business viewer - and the place to come if you want up-to-date figures for Nymex, Ibex, Hex, Late Dax, XetraDax, Atx, Omx and DJ Stoxx. Viewers who wouldn't give 4x for any of those do get a brief respite at 12.30 British time, when the channel runs the NBC Nightly News, and immediately after that when you can go teleshopping. But for most of the day it's seamless coverage of world markets. The programmes - Asia Squawk Box, European Closing Bell and US Power Lunch - are nowhere near as lively as their titles, though the broadcasting style is a little more adventurous and dynamic than Bloomberg.

SKY SPORTS NEWS

Owned by: BSkyB

Hours per day: 18 hours with a loop during the night

Perhaps because it shares their obsession with results Sky Sports News looks most like the business news channels - the television image often being pressed into one corner of the screen by panels of fixtures and final scores. If a football manager loses his temper in the middle of a pre-match conference or a tennis player is accused of taking banned substances few other channels will be able to match this one's exhaustive dissection of the issues. The awesome quantity of space that it can devote to the philosophies and emotional tribulations of Premiership managers and coaches mean that it regularly breaks stories about transfers and career developments.

ITV NEWS

Owned by: ITV

Hours per day: 24 hours

Uses the same colour-scheme, the same music and the same bongs as the News at Ten flagship - comfortingly familiar for Alastair Stewart, Carol Barnes and Angela Rippon, among the established newscasters this parvenu channel has hired to give it some pedigree. ITN has the sparsest screen aesthetic, using abstract backdrops rather than images of a busy newsroom. This can make it feel slightly airless and disconnected from the world. Editor Dominic Crossley-Holland recently agitated for changes to the Sky electronic programme guide to end ITV News's segregation from the other domestic 24 hour channels, a move he says would increase his audience reach at the press of a button.

S4C2

Owned by: Funded by Department for Culture, Media and Sport

Hours per day: Live coverage of Welsh Assembly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The news channel for Sianel Pedwar Cymru (Channel Four Wales) is funded by the Government and was launched in September 1999 to provide live coverage of the proceedings of the National Assembly for Wales. As a viewing spectacle it is akin to sitting in the public seats at a meeting of your local authority's planning development control sub-committee, only with more empty seats. Live coverage is broadcast on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with discussion and analysis provided before and after each session. Since the Assembly conducts its affairs bilingually, the broadcast is also bilingual.