[harshy]

It's hard to tell, though, how completely true this is. 
- Viewing is down compared to the last few years, but then News channel viewing was exceptionally high from 2020-22. BBC News' share figures are in line with where they were pre-Covid.
- August figures are down on previous months, and the lowest since the current BARB methodology came in in December 2021, but BBC Parliament (who simulcasted with BBC News for the whole month) saw a doubling of audience from July - suggesting overall audience actually increased in August.
- BBC News viewership has declined, but so has Sky News', albeit it at a slower rate. Taken over the last six months, the year-on-year fall is 13% for Sky and 20% for the BBC in reach, but 26% for Sky and 34% for BBC in average daily minutes. Comparing individual months, as the article does, is a bit selective - had you compared June-June, BBC would do better.

In summary, viewership is down, but a substantive chunk of this decline is a) across both news channels (as well as a wider decline in TV viewership) and b) coming off the back of a few exceptionally high years for news channels. It's hard to disentangle these factors and you'd really need to see the figures for individual slots (some of which have changed more than others) to know how much the changes were directly responsible.

I don’t think the bbc bosses are too fussed with Uk audiences declining, they’ve already accepted that and the results are what we are watching now, what they will care about is if world audiences are declining and therefore affecting their advertising revenue(maybe that’s why we have these half baked programme strands) as I imagine this merged operation is now reliant on commercial money.