UK news media are widely accessible across all nations and regions. Superfast broadband provision reaches 95 per cent of UK homes and businesses and while 4G mobile coverage is patchy in some rural areas, approximately 70 per cent of rural households receive 4G from at least one network (the figure for urban areas is between 90 and 100 per cent). High-quality access to online news sources is therefore relatively widespread excluding geographically remote and sparsely populated areas such as the Scottish Highlands (Ofcom, 2019a). Broadcast and print news coverage are both characterized by combined national and local/regional coverage. On television, designated public service broadcasters (PSBs) in the UK provide a mix of national and regional news (BBC and the ITV network), national-only news coverage (Channel 4 and Channel 5), as well as minority-language news coverage in Wales and Scotland (via S4C and BBC Alba respectively) (Ofcom, 2018a). Digital terrestrial television channels (including Local TV channels with specific news provision obligations) and cable/satellite channels, licenced by Ofcom, are available nationwide and include a number of minority or international news channels as well as 24-hour UK outlets such as Sky News and the BBC News Channel (Ofcom, n.d.). Radio news is provided nationally by the BBC and on commercial stations by Sky News Radio. Local commercial radio stations are obliged to provide local news content at peak times (Ofcom, 2019b).
The UK has a highly centralized national newspaper market based in London, with ten national daily newspapers and nine national Sunday newspapers (the Independent and its Sunday stablemate the Independent on Sunday ceased print publication in 2016 and is now available online only). However, many of the national newspaper titles, including the Sun, The Times (and Sunday Times) and the Daily Mail publish separate editions for publication in Scotland and large regional titles in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland cover those nations in their entirety or in large part. Below this tier of regional newspapers are approximately 1,000 local daily and weekly newspapers (Media Reform Coalition, 2019). While there are some isolated areas that lack local newspaper coverage and concerns about the decline of daily local newspapers (Ramsay & Moore, 2016) the majority of the country is served by at least one local newspaper (and associated website). Hyperlocal news sites are accessible across the UK, but tend to be unevenly distributed across the country and concentrated in urban areas (Centre for Community Journalism, n.d.).
