This is the second of four blogs, summarising the insights of our speakers, who took part in our Big Talk 2025, answering the question: Is Television News Dead? We’ve already published a blog based on what Richard Burgess, the BBC’s Director of News Content said. And we will follow with blogs about Jonathan Levy, Managind Director and Executive Editor of Sky News, and Debbie Ramsay, Editor of 5 News.
Andrew heads up news and current affairs content across ITV. He has overall responsibility for ITV’s network news, regional news and current affairs output, on both ITV1 and all ITV’s digital platforms. He is responsible for leading and inspiring the senior news management team, and a team of 800 journalists who work across regional news. He started by explaining the evening news programme on ITV is as
popular as ever, so much so that bosses asked to expand it to an hour, to keep up with audience demand. His teams also provide news for Good Morning Britain and have 12 regional hubs across the country creating 18 shows a day. Those shows are often the most watched on ITV, so the idea of linear news dying is completely exaggerated in his opinion.
The beauty of loyal audiences
ITV News has loyal audiences that keep coming back day after day – so much so that if Andrew’s team decide to change something such as moving the weather updates to another time, they will get complaints! Also, rather amusingly, 10 years ago Coronation Street would attract around 10 million viewers whereas ITV News would get 4 million. Fast forward to 2025 and the soap has dropped to around 4 million, while ITV News still pulls in between 2 to 3 million. Therefore, the resilience and demand of news output on linear TV is clear to see.
Audience demographic
As with other broadcasters though, Andrew admits audiences to traditional television news are relatively old. Although they won’t turn their backs on TV news, they do have to consider how to connect with younger diverse audiences in order to survive into the future. In response to the issue, ITV launched their own on-demand streaming service, ITV X, with the goal of connecting to 25 to 54 year olds. It has been a huge success, in part because on-demand is how younger audiences choose to receive their content, and news was a huge part of the ITV X offering from the start.
Serving younger audiences
Andrew also addressed the misconception that younger audiences aren’t interested in the same news stories as older ones – he believes they are, they just want to receive them in a different format. The social media platform Tik Tok, for example, is massive for younger generations, so they have had to adapt and deliver shorter form news content there too. Furthermore, younger generations like light and shade in their news, which is why the ITV’s unique mix of hard news, showbiz stories and “and finally pieces” seems to hit the mark really well.
Check out our highlights video, about our Big Talk 2025
Interested in learning more about broadcast PR?
Make sure you’re on our mailing list, so you get invited to our events and workshops. Most months we will have a senior broadcast journalist speaking. Email hello@shoutcommunications.co.uk.
And if you want some support with your next broadcast PR campaign you can always speak to one of the team on 020 7240 7373.
