British television news has never looked so vulnerable. Shifting viewing habits threaten its nightly bulletins with marginalisation, while its digital journalism is exposed to hostile social algorithms.
The potential consequences for society are profound. As Silicon Valley overlords put on the masks of freedom of expression activists, while seeking to subvert democracies or cosy up to Donald Trump, Britain is in danger of losing the shared truths which TV news has underpinned for 60 years.
Ofcom’s new News Consumption in the UK 2024 report reveals that the top five news sources for 16-24s in the UK are as follows: Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and X. All of them foreign-owned social channels.
British broadcasters see the risk of disappearing off the radar. BBC News has just appointed a social strategy and digital growth chief, Jonny McGuigan. At ITN, there is talk that incoming director of news and current affairs at ITV, Andrew Dagnell, must take radical action.
“The viewing numbers for old-fashioned TV news programmes on the main TV channels can only be going in one direction,” says Nigel Dacre, former editor of ITV News, writing in ITN’s internal 1955 Club newsletter.
“Given the speed of developments in viewing behaviour on TV and elsewhere, sitting back and not making changes is probably not an option for the new boss of ITV News.”
So great is this disruption that it seems inevitable that pressure will fall on broadcasters to move, reduce or take resources from traditional evening bulletins, which are expensive and occupy space in prime time schedules. “It’s a 1960s construction,” says one senior industry insider who anticipates schedule changes in public broadcast news this year.
The media must break its self-destructive dependency on X in 2025
Read MoreFor now, this must be resisted. ITV News At Ten never fully recovered from confusing switches to 11pm and then 10.30pm made more than 20 years ago. Lead presenter Tom Bradby now brings stability. The BBC’s Ten is still reeling from the demise of Huw Edwards. It needs a distinct figurehead, not the current carousel of newscasters.
In worrying times, we need the BBC’s “Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation” voice at fixed moments in the day, not merely another provider of video clips that may or may not surface in our social feeds. Keir Starmer should understand this, as the Financial Times splashes claims that X owner Elon Musk – currently the most influential news magnate on earth – is determined to remove him before the election because he believes “Western civilisation itself is threatened” by his presence in Downing Street.
The BBC is similarly bullied. Reform UK has pledged to “scrap the BBC licence fee”, a document that its attack dog MP Lee Anderson theatrically rips up in public. Robert Jenrick, seen as a future Conservative leader, is “tempted” to scrap the fee. The perils the BBC faced under Boris Johnson’s regime might seem trifling in comparison to what might follow a Labour election defeat.
Negotiations begin again soon on the BBC’s charter, an every decade process which BBC chair Samir Shah thinks should be scrapped. “We’re in constant dialogue about the very existence of the BBC,” he complained. Unlike previous hardball talks over the BBC’s funding, ministers should work to secure its finances until 2037 or make its charter indefinite. Maintaining linear bulletins at 6pm and 10pm should be a condition.
Sky News is also in jeopardy. When US giant Comcast bought Sky from Rupert Murdoch in 2018 it agreed to continue the loss-making news service until 2028. Sky reported operating losses of £224m for 2023. Sky News is a global player with more followers on TikTok than BBC News. It produces unique eye-witness journalism and Comcast should stand by it, even if it is being beaten in TV ratings by upstart GB News.
When that deliberately abrasive channel launched in 2021, followed by Murdoch’s TalkTV, the investment signalled confidence in TV as a news medium. But the Murdoch project effectively ended with star presenter Piers Morgan leaving last week to go solo. GB News has certainly got itself noticed, helping to put the “grooming gangs” scandal back in the news. But it is a loss-making, studio-based outlet that is largely a platform for Nigel Farage.
We need deeply-reported bulletins. With the world focused on AI, it might sound Luddite to lobby for a fading format made famous by Reginald Bosanquet and Walter Cronkite. The number of Americans watching an evening network news broadcast has fallen from one in four in 1980 to fewer than one in 14 in 2019. But these bulletins still hold power to account. President Trump has threatened to remove the licences of ABC, CBS and Comcast’s NBC over news coverage that irked him.
We cannot allow similar threats to our shared truths to be carried out here.
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