The purpose of this study is to examine the contents of TV-news from the viewpoint of discourse analysis. We studied three evening news-programs during 20 days which got the high audience rating. First, we made an audience rating survey about three news-programs (subjects: 290 university-students), and an image survey (subjects: 36 university-students). We found that `amusingness' and `personification' of news broadcasting were connected with the audience rating. Next, we studied the differences of the discourse-structures of news among three programs. The results were that, in the program rated as most reliable, much information was given about main-events. In the program rated as most amusing, whose main caster was rated as a person of marked personality, more information was given about evaluation than about main-events. The casters had clear roles through engaging in a dialogue among them. This research showed certain relationships between the image of news-programs and the characteristics of news-discourse.
