New News Future News

Since the failed bombings in London and Glasgow last week and the joy of Alan Johnston’s release, every news organisation has broadcast a huge amount about radical Islamic terrorism. In thinking about the way broadcast news is changing, it’s worth reflecting on the way news about terrorism has changed in the five or six years since 9/11:

We’ve seen the proliferation of news services with different opinions: the rapid growth of non English language global news services like Al Jazeera and Al Arabya plus others available in English but from different perspectives: from France, from Russia, from Al Jazeera in English and others
The nature of UK produced output has changed too: we’ve licensed Islam Channel and various Moslem community radio channels
We’ve seen news coverage involve the audience and the participants in new ways: the mushrooming of social networking affecting stories and the way they’re covered, like the role of Youtube in pictures of the hanging of Saddam Hussain; and the way citizen journalism became a central ingredient of broadcast news in covering the attacks of July 2005
We’ve seen massive spikes in the audiences to Sky and News 24 when events like 7/7 or last weekend unfold live on television
This all points up the enormous pace of change and illustrates that this is a subject which repays careful, evidence based attention

More than five years on from 9/11 the wider broadcasting landscape has changed too. DTT has gone from being a basket case to a massive success. The start of analogue switch off is less than four months away. Half of all households now have broadband. And competition is greater than ever.

What’s unchanged is that audiences still say news is the most important aspect of public service broadcasting, and television remains by far the most used source of news in the UK.

So in preparation for Ofcom’s second statutory PSB review which starts this Autumn, we have been looking at television news in its wider context and how it may change in future, especially after digital switchover. We’ve taken as a starting point the evidence from Ian Hargreaves’ major report five years ago - New News Old News - and added to it a lot of new analysis and research. And we’ve spoken to a number of stakeholders about their views, including several of you here today.

We published our assessment yesterday in a document called New News, Future News. Our aim is not to come up with policy solutions at this stage – the PSB review is the place for that. But the report raises three big questions for the future which I’ll talk about in a moment, and which I’m keen to get your thoughts on. But I want to start by sharing with you what our work says about news right now.

[Slide 1] Let’s start with where people get their news from. TV is still far and away the main source of news for most people: Two thirds of them say it’s their main source – exactly the same as in 2002. The proportion of people saying the internet’s their main news source has trebled - but only to 6%: And radio has declined by a third as people’s main source of news.

[Slide 2] It’s a similar story for what sources of news are ever used by consumers. TV news is used by 19 people out of every 20 – up on five years ago. The internet has become more significant as an additional source of news – a quarter of people use it. But even as secondary sources of news, there’ve been declines in the use of newspapers and radio:

[Slide 3] News viewing is always heavily driven by events. Viewing of UK news on the main networks is down 12% since 2001 – though that’s partly because viewing to news in 2001 was boosted by 9/11. The long term trend over a decade or more is a slow decline of around 1.5% a year, but viewers on average still watch around 90 hours of TV news a year - 15 mins every day. This slide shows that trend and how each channel’s been affected. BBC One has declined the least and continues to dominate news viewing. But news viewing on BBC Two, ITV and five is down sharply over the period. Not shown on this slide but 24 hour news channels have grown around 15% over the last five years from around 9 hours to 10.5 hours per person per year – though that’s still less than 2 minutes a day.

[Slide 4] Internet news sites have developed hugely since 2002: there’s now loads of audio and video news online and an explosion of blogs. But when people use the internet for news, most of them still just read text. The news blogs that everyone talks about are read by only 1 internet news user in 20. Broadband is now in half of households. But only 1 in 5 internet news users watch video news clips:

[Slide 5] The main internet news sources are still TV channel news sites – mostly the BBC - and online aggregators. There’s little sign of wholly new sources of news – at least as yet:

[Slide 6] In 2002, Ian Hargreaves’s report found “a measurable drift away from the priority given to UK politics”. We wanted to know if that trend had continued. The answer’s no. Here’s a breakdown of lead stories by channel for 2002 and 2006, based on periods where no one story dominated the agenda. The priority given to UK politics has increased on every bulletin – especially on the most-watched bulletin – the BBC Ten O’Clock. There’s been some decline in international coverage on BBC One, but an increase on ITV and a consistently high level on Channel 4.

So on this evidence there looks little reason to worry about softening of news agendas.

Our analysis also showed that while the channels try to differentiate themselves in style and approach, the news agenda is remarkably consistent between them. This may have implications for ‘disengagement’ among particular groups in the audience – a subject I’ll return to in a moment.

Looking to the future, the first of the big issues the report raises is this.

Is the current model of competition and plurality sustainable, with commercial public service channels in competition with the BBC for UK and global news?

[Slide 7] The figures initially don’t look encouraging: the advertising revenue collected by ITV around its news bulletins is less than half the cost of producing news. Channel Four news also makes a loss. Five looks different, apparently because of the ad breaks around the short bulletins within movies:

However, we believe the underlying position is much more robust. Firstly, ITV moves advertising minutage away from the 6 till 7 hour, when news is shown, to later in peak-time. It would probably do this in any case, regardless of the programming at 6.30. In fact, at an overall average cost of around £60,000 an hour on ITV, national news can be a cost-efficient deliverer of ratings for a commercial channel. Add to that its benefits for audience reach, its scheduling flexibility, and the brand and reputational advantages of a quality network news service, we believe it is in UK commercial channels’ interests to continue it. So continued plurality of network TV news looks promising. And the data shows audiences continue to want plurality now – as they did in 2002.

The second big question post switchover though is whether the future holds different challenges for nations and regions news?

[Slide 8] These news services have sizeable audiences and high levels of appreciation. Audiences are highly satisfied with both BBC and ITV services:

We asked viewers what news subjects they’d like to see more or less of. ‘Current events in my region or nation’ is the number one subject they want more of, ahead of human interest. Third in this ranking comes more ‘politics in my region or nation’ – ahead of celebrity, consumer affairs, or UK or international current events.

And fewer than a quarter of people complain that the regional spread of their local bulletin is too wide.

[Slide 9] However, as the next slide shows the economics for ITV of producing up to 27 separate simultaneous programmes at one point in the schedule are challenging. The argument about shifting advertising minutes applies as much to regional as to UK news, but even so the figures on the slide are stark. The direct costs look nearly 8 times higher than the direct revenues.

Michael Grade said at our conference in Cardiff last week that ITV want this issue considered in our forthcoming PSB Review. We’re strongly committed to maintaining nations and regions news on ITV at least for the life of the current licences, which run until 2014. But it seems quite possible that other solutions may need to be considered after that point. Will funding directly or indirectly from devolved governments in the nations become more of a possibility – or would that come with too many strings attached? Could ITV be allowed to merge regions, and operate from regional hubs? More fundamentally, will it remain important for audiences to keep competition to the BBC in regional TV news? Or will new content emerge serving local rather than regional communities – something which also increasingly interests audiences?

In 2002 one of the central questions for Ian was concern about disengagement from news by the young and some minority ethnic groups. Our third big question is whether people are engaging with news more or less today?

People have debated recently whether younger people have always found other things to do with their lives apart from watch TV news. Or whether there really is a shift going on. In terms of absolute levels of news consumption it’s always been the case. But our research suggests young people are now disengaging much more from news. It also suggests that to a lesser extent the population as a whole is too. Let me show you the data.

[Slide 10] This slide shows responses among all adults in purple and among 16-24s in pink to three statements about engagement with news. In each case the bar in the lighter shade shows the position in 2002, the darker shade the position in 2006.

The top set of bars show that since 2002 the proportion of 16-24s who feel it is important to keep up with the news has fallen a little - from 89 to 81 per cent. The rest of the population have stayed exactly the same at 90%.

The middle set of bars show that one half of 16-24s say they now only follow the news when something interesting or important is happening, up from a third five years ago. Responses to this question are up amongst all adults too, though by less.

And the bottom set of bars show that two thirds of 16-24s state that much of the news on TV is not relevant to them personally, up from 44%. The trend here is just as marked for all adults, up from 34% to 55%.

Disengagement among some ethnic minorities has some similarities to the young. Half of minority ethnic respondents said they only follow the news when something important is happening, up from 2002 and much higher than the comparable number for white respondents .

But it has some important differences. Asian and Black groups are less likely than the population at large to watch TV network and in particular radio news. Both are more likely to watch 24 hour news channels, while Asians are much more likely to consume news on TV channels from the sub-continent and news from the internet. In focus groups, members of some minorities said they watched the news to see how their race, culture or faith is being portrayed. Black viewers feared the media linked them negatively to crime; Muslims feared the media linked them to extremism. In our survey, around a quarter of Asian respondents felt that ethnic minorities get too little time in mainstream news, but the equivalent figures for Black Caribbeans and Black Africans approach two-thirds. The figures are very similar when people are asked whether TV news showed people like me.

There are no easy answers as to how collectively we might tackle these issues about engagement. We’re keen to generate a wide debate on the subject.

One possibility – no more than that - post-2014 might be relaxation of the statutory rules on impartiality. We believe these will remain absolutely essential for maintaining overall trust in key PSB providers, such as the BBC and Channel 4. But might a degree of relaxation for other services enable a wider range of voices to be heard, and for minority groups to feel more engaged? Minority ethnic groups don’t see mainstream media ( BBC, ITV, broadsheets) as being as impartial as do the rest of the population. C4 performs better among minority ethnic groups than white people for impartiality. Such relaxation could also reflect that, by 2014, convergence may have reached the point where similar-seeming services may reach the same screen in the same way, but from an entirely different regulatory background – regulated ‘TV’ alongside unregulated press or internet.

Another possible area which the research suggests might be relevant is representation of different groups. A major issue around disaffection with mainsteam news media appears to be that younger people and minority ethnic groups just don’t feel they’re represented enough, and when they are, they feel caricatured.

[slide 12] So based on our evidence, our three main thoughts for the future of news are:

First: we believe continued plurality of news looks promising post switchover, both for broadcast news and the possibility of emerging new sources.

Second: the position in the nations and regions is much less assured beyond the BBC, though audiences value the service and still want plurality. We will look at the possibility of new kinds of public intervention post switchover, and also assess what might be possible at local and community levels.

Third: There is clearly a growing problem of disengagement from news. We’ve put forward one or two possible ideas which might help, but much more thought and energy from all of you is also required.

As I said at the beginning, this report is intended to stimulate debate not come to policy conclusions. The document sets out in more detail than has been possible here the questions which we’d love to get your views on – both now, and over the coming weeks and months.

Thank you

The slides for this presentation are available via the link below.

New News Future News

Peter Phillips, 5 July 2007
Partner, Strategy and Market Developments

New News Future News

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