TV news audiences could fall by a third within a decade, says ex-BBC boss

Audiences for TV will fall by a third in a decade on current trends as younger viewers are currently tuning in for just 25 hours a year, according to a former BBC News executive.

Richard Sambrook also said that older people were increasingly adopting the digital consumption habits of younger viewers and watching less TV news.

Sambrook, director of the Centre for Journalism at Cardiff University, co-authored a report for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism which found that audiences for TV are declining by up to 4% a year.

It said 18- to 24-year-olds watched only 25 hours of TV news a year, compared with an average of 108 hours across all adults.

“There is a structural shift in the way people consume media. TV viewing generally and TV news viewing in particular is seeing a greater erosion of people watching,” Sambrook told the Media Show on Radio 4 on Wednesday.

Looking across a number of developed markets, Sambrook said TV news audiences had fallen 3% or 4% a year over the last four years. “There is a definite trend,” he said.

Sambrook warned that news was not benefiting from the “golden age of TV” – with the proliferation of on-demand devices – as much as drama, entertainment and sport.

Channel 4 News editor Ben de Pear said his programme had bucked the trend by looking to reflect the identity and interests of its audience, including a large proportion of black, Asian and minority ethnic viewers.

He said the channel’s average nightly audience had grown to 630,000, up about 4% from 607,000 in 2014.

Sky News executive editor John McAndrew said the channel has also added viewers year on year, and the channel had looked to put debate and discussion on its daytime schedule and move news items onto mobile, breaking into the schedule for big breaking stories.

The channel will launch a new weekly debate show, The Pledge, featuring pundits including Greg Dyke, June Sarpong, Rachel Johnson and Graeme Le Saux, airing at 8pm in the evening.

“The issue is can we do something new and innovative that gives people more opinion, more debate, and something to engage them when they might have got all the news headlines on their phone on the way home,” he added.