ITC report says TV news is becoming a turn-off for Scots

SCOTTISH television viewers may be avid fans of news programming but they are now watching less of it than ever and showing increasing dissatisfaction with the quality of local news sources.

Those were just two of the conclusions reached by a new Scottish breakdown of the Independent Television Commission's (ITC) recent research document, New News, Old News. The report looked at declining levels of engagement in the political process as well as press and broadcast news.

The new quantitative data on news consumption habits and related attitudes in Scotland was discussed last Friday at an ITC seminar in Edinburgh hosted by the report's co-author Ian Hargreaves. Hargreaves, a former editor of The Independent and of the New Statesman, is now director of Cardiff University's Centre for Journalism Studies.

The data highlighted the popularity of TV news with Scottish audiences (76% say that television provides their main source of news - compared to 65% in the UK as a whole), and showed that Scots also report greater use of 24-hour TV news channels (a weekly reach of 47%, compared to 34% at a UK level).

When asked if they were satisfied with the choice of news and current affairs available to them, people in Scotland, like elsewhere, were overwhelmingly satisfied (97%) with the news. Reliance on newspapers as the main source of news was the same as the UK average while radio (at 9%) was considerably less than some English regions.

However, according to Hargreaves one of the areas of concern was the dissatisfaction with local news sources. In Scotland, TV was valued less as a local news sources (at 36%) than the national of 45%. In contrast, national newspapers were valued more than elsewhere in the UK.

"The Scots certainly feel that their national newspapers are more useful at providing local news than people living in the Midlands or London, but there are still real issues about local news in the UK as a whole," said Hargreaves.

While he acknowledged the levels of satisfaction reported in the ITC report would seem high in relation to other products - the decline in the number of TV news viewers, of newspaper readers and radio listeners (in relation to news, at least) - and predictable given the proliferation of information sources, Hargreaves argued that the decline was still a matter of concern.

"You have a move towards more speech or music in radio, and TV news is free, which represents a problem for newspapers. With the report we are just trying to make sure that politicians, broadcasters and regulators recognise that this is a hugely important issue."

Linked to the dissatisfaction with local news coverage, were figures in the report which showed that only 21% were "very satisfied" with the choice of news and current affairs programmes available to them. However, Scots were more positive (77%) about the ability of TV news and current affairs to provide them with information about UK politics than others in the UK.

"I know that the broadcasters have welcomed the report and I think the organisations like ITV and BBC recognise it as an accurate description of what's going on - even if they don't agree with our conclusions," said Hargreaves.

The main ITC report (produced by Hargreaves and James Thomas) concluded that the long-term reduction in audiences for TV and radio news, combined with the decline in the use of newspapers, was a major issue because the UK's news infrastructure "risks being undermined by a growing assumption that news is something available free of charge and even free of effort."

Ownership changes in the media world and an altered regulatory environment linked to next year's Communications Bill were both addressed in the report, which recommended that the Bill helped to defend public service news and ensured diversity in the commercial sector too.

Hargreaves concluded that he believed all broadcasters needed to find improved ways of drawing audiences into a broader mix of news and offering them a deeper understanding of it.

Copyright 2002 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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