News consumption in the UK remains high but is fragmenting as audiences for traditional sources of news (print and broadcast) decline and audiences – particularly younger audiences – seek a more varied mix of news, increasingly accessed online and via mobile. Data from the telecommunications regulator Ofcom’s 2019 annual survey of news consumption demonstrates the present generational split, replicated in Table 1 (Ofcom, 2019c, p.15).
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The top three sources of news for all UK adults in 2019 were the television channel BBC One (used by 58 per cent of all adults over the age of 16), the commercial terrestrial television channel ITV (including its regional franchises) (40 per cent) and Facebook (35 per cent). While older audiences (aged 65+) are more likely to use BBC One (78 per cent) and ITV (52 per cent), only one in ten reported using Facebook, with the BBC’s 24-hour News Channel the third most popular source. Younger audiences again diverge from the average, with only one-third using BBC one and one-quarter using ITV. Instead, they were considerably more likely to use social media to access news, with Facebook (49 per cent), Instagram (38 per cent) and Twitter (33 per cent) the three most commonly used sources of news for those aged 16-24 (Ofcom, 2019c, p. 21). Adults of all ages, however, use a wide variety of sources to make up their news diet, with an average of 6.7 individual news sources across all platforms being accessed. There is little deviation between age groups, with both 16-34-year olds and 35-54-year-olds reporting using an average of 7.0 news sources and those aged 55 and older using 6.2 sources on average (Ofcom, 2019c, p.66).
Within traditional platforms, the age divide is pronounced. Figures from the Broadcast Audience Research Board shows that flagship evening television news bulletins still reach audiences comparable to those reached ten years ago: the BBC’s News at Six has an approximate average audience of five million viewers (compared with approximately 4.9 million in 2010) while ITV’s early evening news bulletin reaches 3.6 million people on average, slightly down from 3.9 million a decade ago. The main news bulletins of Channel 4 and Channel 5 reach 0.75 million and 0.3 million respectively (Mediatel, 2020). Demographic breakdowns of audience profiles for the respective timeslots show that younger viewers only account for a tiny percentage of the audience (3 per cent of BBC One audience between 1730 and 2000; 3 per cent of ITV audience and 6 per cent and 3 per cent of Channel 4 and Channel 5 audiences respectively). Radio news continues to reach significant audiences, with 72 per cent of UK adults using BBC radio and 59 per cent using commercial radio for news; younger audiences obtained news from BBC Radio 1 (53 per cent of adults 16-24) and commercial stations Heart (28 per cent) and Capital (38 per cent) (Ofcom, 2019c, p.32).
National print newspaper circulation has declined by over half since 2010 (Ofcom, 2019c, p. 34), though total brand reach (print and online) figures show that some newsbrands now reach larger audiences within the UK than they have for some time (Media Reform Coalition, 2019, p.7). PAMCo data on the proportion of print audiences from younger demographic groups (aged 15-24) shows that the quality (broadsheet) national press only receives between 2 per cent (Daily Telegraph) and 6 per cent (Guardian) of their readership from this age group, though this is on average higher than the popular press (1.5 per cent for the Daily Mail and 3.0 per cent for the Sun), if lower in terms of absolute numbers (Mediatel, 2020). Younger audiences are, however, more likely to access certain legacy print newsbrands than older audiences when print and digital audiences are combined (Ofcom, 2019c, p.39). Lower brand loyalties among younger audiences are confirmed by their increased tendency to access online news via social media posts (56 per cent of 16-24s versus 41 per cent of all adults) than directly from news organisations’ websites or apps (22 per cent versus 30 per cent).
The habits of news consumers in the UK have been affected by the country’s prolonged exit of the European Union and associated political upheavals. The 2019 Reuters Digital News Report noted that 35 per centof Britons sometimes or often deliberately avoid domestic news, with Brexit being the primary reason; this has played into declining news audiences for certain – particularly legacy print and broadcast – news outlets (Reuters, 2019, p.68).
