[newsdesk]

After the news involving Donald Trump, the UK feed has decided to stick with World News America - which means no crashing into Newsnight. If only they did this every night instead of the current situation at the end of News at Ten...

I thought the same initially, but wasn’t it because BBC1 billetin started at 2210 after Eurovision?

I flicked over at about 2227 and the weather was wrapping up - lots of trailers and the countdown-free countdown needed until Newsnight started.

EDIT - WNA scheduled for Thursday too, presumably for the same reason.

Ah yes, seems like it - guessing it just happened to work in their favour with the scheduling! Despite this, still feels much neater with the way it was done tonight.

[Chud]

Karishma Vaswani leaving the BBC. Just as they fill the Washington vacancies, one appears in Singapore.

[DTV]

Barb's monthly figures for April are out.

First, the headline figures (changes from March)
Reach: 15.3% (-1.5pp, -9%)
Share: 1.08% (-0.17pp, -14%)
Average Daily Minutes: 01:39 (-00:21, -18%)

And, for comparison, here's the same for Sky News
Reach: 12.1% (-0.9pp, -7%)
Share: 0.75% (-0.04pp, -5%)
Average Daily Minutes: 01:08 (-00:08, -11%)

A slight slowdown might have been expected (due to the general decline in TV viewership towards summer), but undeniably a poor month for BBC News - the worst on all three measures since the current way of reporting came in in December 2021. But the same is also true for Sky (though with a relatively lower decline), so clearly something of a slow news month.

But there are some important qualifiers to be made to the above data.

[*]The period the current method of reporting covers includes some major viewer spiking news events, so, while lower than recent months, neither the BBC or Sky's figures would be atypical for this point of the year a few years ago.
[*]Also, while the BBC's month-on-month % changes may look big, they are actually only slightly above average for news channel fluctuations - in the last 16 months, there have been six where ADM changed by more than 20% in either direction.
[*]And, though the BBC has experienced a relative decline compared to Sky from March-April, the BBC performed relatively better from February-March - when comparing April to February, their drops are near identical.


Ultimately, given the fluctuations in news channel viewership, will have to wait and see if this month and the BBC's relative decline is part of a longer trend or merely a one-off poor month. Though, I have to say that, at present, it seems the figures are unlikely to be abnormal enough to trigger any kind of rethink - which isn't particularly surprising considering the larger public blowback over BBC Singers than the News channel changes.

[LDN]

Just going to leave this here... 

twitter.com  

A couple of quotes from that article:

BBC News’ audience reach in April stood at 9.7M viewers, according to figures published by Barb, the UK ratings body. This was down 9% from 10.7M in March and 23% from 12.6M in April 2022.

The 9.7M figure was comfortably BBC News’ worst audience reach in at least 16 months

Insiders said BBC managers were warned about a potential ratings slump and Barb’s figures were “entirely predictable.” One person said the channel’s agenda was “relentlessly global,” while a second added: “The UK viewer never knows what they’re going to get.”

[Brekkie]

No surprise at all.

As an aside are the BBC1 network presenters now only doing the BBC1 network bulletins? It's still a bit of a mess as to who hosts what it seems but do they generally have them doubling up hosting either the 1/6 or 6/10 each day?

[Newsroom]

No surprise at all.

As an aside are the BBC1 network presenters now only doing the BBC1 network bulletins?    It's still a bit of a mess as to who hosts what it seems but do they generally have them doubling up hosting either the 1/6 or 6/10 each day?

Nobody from Network has appeared on that Channel since it changed.

There has been some doubling up, but nothing out of the ordinary..oh, other than Sophie Raworth doing the One and Fiona Bruce doing a Ten.

[Kojak]

Ultimately, given the fluctuations in news channel viewership, will have to wait and see if this month and the BBC's relative decline is part of a longer trend or merely a one-off poor month. Though, I have to say that, at present, it seems the figures are unlikely to be abnormal enough to trigger any kind of rethink - which isn't particularly surprising considering the larger public blowback over BBC Singers than the News channel changes.

I think the real acid test will come in 6-12 months time, when we can look at the figures month by month and see what the general trend is. I don’t see anything changing with the channel within that time - I suspect the BBC will want April’s changes to bed in for a while longer before any further tinkering. 

I do wonder what will happen when the election is called. I can’t imagine much of the day-to-day coverage that would have taken place previously is all that relevant to an international audience. Might we perhaps see more of the balcony during the campaign? Or (wishful thinking, probably) a return to a more traditional UK opt (presented and produced by, I don’t know, the One team)? They’re going to have to be creative. Perhaps Election Call could be revived?

[Stooky Bill]

It has been a bit of a dull month for news, especially compared with the last couple of years, so I suspect ratings would have been down a bit anyway.

I do wonder if the changes to both the news channel and local radio aren't entirely budget related, going by who's in charge it could be suggested that they're being deliberately crippled

[Newsroom]

It has been a bit of a dull month for news, especially compared with the last couple of years, so I suspect ratings would have been down a bit anyway.

I do wonder if the changes to both the news channel and local radio aren't entirely budget related, going by who's in charge it could be suggested that they're being deliberately crippled

Ooh, be careful Stooky, you're providing the perfect fodder for the cronies over at the 'other place' to bash you and others here. ;-)

[DTV]

I think the real acid test will come in 6-12 months time, when we can look at the figures month by month and see what the general trend is. I don’t see anything changing with the channel within that time - I suspect the BBC will want April’s changes to bed in for a while longer before any further tinkering.

Agreed, need multi-month data to actually create any firm conclusions - the real test will be if it dips outside the pre-Covid share baseline of around 1-1.3%. And I'd also agree it's unlikely to see any substantive changes before the autumn at the earliest (though, I wouldn't be surprised if the originally advertised 'new sport programmes' launched at the start of the football season).

I do wonder what will happen when the election is called. I can’t imagine much of the day-to-day coverage that would have taken place previously is all that relevant to an international audience. Might we perhaps see more of the balcony during the campaign? Or (wishful thinking, probably) a return to a more traditional UK opt (presented and produced by, I don’t know, the One team)? They’re going to have to be creative. Perhaps Election Call could be revived?

I think it will be interesting to see how they cover the election - obviously there's a degree of coverage that can be included on World (and they have had some specific programming in the past, in 2010 they took an edited The Campaign Show daily), but I expect a degree of opt-outs will be required for the UK audience - I would guess, though, from the Millbank teams, rather than Network? Something like Election Call would make sense, and they have done Ask... for recent elections, but surely they'd just utilise Nicky Campbell for that?