Wednesday, 26 February 2025
The slow, inexorable death of television news
Fred Skulthorp has an interesting and perennially topical Critic piece on the slow death of television news, something we've been watching now for quite a few years. We may not watch television news, but watching it collapse is interesting.
The slow, inexorable death of television news
Traditional broadcasters find themselves adrift in a radically different twenty-first century
Kay Burley retired from Sky News in February, disappearing from the airwaves in the dead of winter to an almost eerie indifference. In her valedictory speech she boasted not of journalistic scoops, merely of a stubborn endurance: “More hours of live TV than anyone in history.”
In 2025, such a boast seems a rather strange claim to fame, one of those herculean yet irrelevant curios more at home in the Guinness Book of Records than the annals of statesmanship once reserved for public service broadcasting.
The whole piece is well worth reading, partly because the collapse of television news is a drama worth watching and partly because of frantic government efforts to control the direction of collapse.
“There is no plan,” said one former BBC editor, when I asked about how the industry might navigate this new world. The crisis he laid bare is twofold: one of relevancy but also competence when forced to work in the confines of a cumbersome 20th century bureaucracy. ”It’s journalism NPCs looking at the news wires and working out who we can get to speak on the topic to fill airtime,” he added. “All too often, the result is lazy and cheap — and surprise, surprise, people no longer regard it as a national treasure worth preserving.
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13 comments:
I'll tell you a story.
I worked in television journalism for 25 years.
Early on, the station I then worked for embarked on a policy of positive discrimination, deliberately employing black and Asian presenters over white journalists. It meant recruiting from local newspapers and hacks straight out of journalism school with no television experience.
Older, experienced, male, white journos (stale, male and pale were the anti-buzzwords ) were eased off-screen in favour of these kids. " Tinge before talent " was the motto.
It was a disaster and turned off viewers in their hundreds of thousands. People are not stupid and despise being treated as such.
But two things in particular killed off TV news in the UK.
Social media is the most important. The " message " can no longer be controlled. Citizen journalists deliver it instead.It also shows the raw footage the broadcasters didn't think the public ought to see.
And Brexit.
The obvious bias of the BBC, SKY and ITV towards Leave coincided with a massive downturn in viewing figures.
I've worked in all three newsrooms and they're all overwhelmingly infested with left-wing university graduates who despise the ordinary people they consider too thick to appreciate their work and rarely travel out of the newsroom never mind the M25.
I haven't watched any of them for years.
It used to be that the news, especially on the BBC, was read by a person with clear diction and given without any agenda, A clear balance was achieved. Now some young oik of either or indeterminate sex gives a breathless account of what they think happened or what they wish had happened. It cannot be relied upon to be either true or impartial. We have stopped watching the news on New Zealand TV for exactly that reason. Print news has been going the same way for a long time and is dying as a result.
The job of journalist has changed. It is no longer about the news, or even opinions about the news, it is about filling column inches or pixels to keep the ad revenue flowing. Even the BBC has been sucked into this breathless mindset.
It all comes down to trust and once you lose it you'll never get it back.
Sky News is dying on its arse. It never made a profit but Murdoch kept it going because he believes in journalism.
Once DEI and woke-obsessed Comcast bought it the writing was on the wall.
Today it barely gets 50,000 viewers and along with the BBC news channel has been overtaken by the amateurish GB News which itself gets fewer than 80,000 viewers.
Sky News will be gone within a year. Who in their right mind would pay for its content ?
Another story - Jon Sopel used to be the BBC's Washington correspondent who failed to disguise is hatred of Trump.
Instead he would file reports from the Washington bureau based on guidance from the British Embassy where he was a regular guest and never actually do any proper reporting.
He was known in the DC press corps as the Olympic Flame because he never went out.
Anon - it's very interesting to hear from the inside, thanks for the comment. I assume television news viewers must be an ageing population which in the nature of things must dwindle. Not only that, but presenters will look younger and more callow as time goes on. They did to me before I stopped watching.
John - we don't watch it either and we can tell which people of our age still watch and still take in what they are told.
DJ - yes, the headline often gives it away, written in a way which claims there is an interesting story to tell but we aren't telling you what it is unless you click. We already know it isn't even worth a click.
Anon - my comment came before your second, so thanks again. I've heard that Sky News intends to be online only behind a paywall which sounds very optimistic. I don't know how successful paywalled news is, but presumably it is cheap to run, but there is so much free news out there, it seems unlikely to attract a mass audience.
I like the Olympic Flame jibe, must pinch that.
In order of despicable on BBC News - Are you far right, extreme right, extreme far right or just a normal UK citizen.
Doonhamer - are we allowed to say "just a normal UK citizen"?
I can't be sure when I last watched TV news. It may have been on the late evening/early morning when there were the first reports of Diana's death - my wife got me out of bed to join her in front of the telly. I didn't stay long.
More likely it was 9/11 though I got much of the news from a Chilean station: does that count?
I did see a little of the coverage of the death of the Queen, or rather of the transport of her body south.
None of those were conventional news programmes but rather live coverage of events. I haven't watched a News at Six or News at Ten or what have you in decades. Why would I? They are characterised by propaganda, lies and omissions.
dearieme - here in the UK, news from a Chilean station probably does count as BBC licence material - an odd thought that. I watched TV news of Diana's death and 9/11, but even by 9/11 I was browsing the internet for more varied coverage.
It was on the internet that I watched the Chilean station.
And I haven't listened to Beeb radio in decades except perhaps the days when Radio Three carried live Test coverage. In 1992 our kitchen radio was changed by Herself: Classic FM instead of Radio Three. No more sighing when we were given bloody awful music that somebody reckoned was Good For Us.
I can't listen to Classic FM, I admit - the bloody voices are too intrusive. It's the way the football highlights telly shows are going - too little football, too much inanity. I assume that paid-for channels are no better. Blether, blether, blether.
dearieme - I used to listen to Classic FM and had the same problem - too much blether.
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