[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.