Research should shock everyone, but just PR industry

How do you keep up with the news: TV? Radio? News papers?  Internet?

To PR people, the concept of not keeping up with the news is unthinkable. So it is a shock to be told that 10 per cent of people in the UK don’t and that the number of people taking this attitude doubled in 2015.

Also concerning is the fact that 14 per cent of us acquire our news only by word of mouth.

It’s fascinating to speculate why ….. and even more to know the answer to the question. Are they all too busy? Not interested? Do they just want entertainment and gossip about celebrities? Is it too depressing?

These revelations are among the absorbing findings of extensive annual research by OfCom entitled News Consumption in the UK which provides vital insight for PR people that will help to guide the targeting and placement of news.

The research delves deep into the news gathering habits of the nation, looking at behaviour by age group and region, and at which channels and publications we choose. Picking through the key findings and year on year trends, it’s curious to see that overall, there is a decline in the number of adults receiving news from all the major media types.

The proportion who choose TV, by far the most used medium, has gone down from 78 per cent in 2013, to 75 per cent in 2014 and a big drop to 67 per cent in 2015.  Among them, 72 per cent use BBC, followed by ITV (41 per cent) the BBC News Channel 20 per cent and Sky News 19 per cent.

The popularity of listening to radio for news declined from 36 per cent to 32 per cent while newspapers as a source went down from 40 to 31 per cent. Within newspaper readers, those choosing tabloids went down from 37 to 32 per cent but from broadsheets went up from 24 to 28 per cent and from Metro up from 10 per cent to 14 per cent.

It’s perhaps a surprise to discover that the proportion of people getting their news from the internet or apps did not grow last year but stayed the same at 40 per cent. Even more interesting and another indicator for the future of news is that among young adults, 60 per cent say the internet or apps are their main source of news and, of them, 20 per cent say it is their only source.

News Consumption in the UK 2015 is essential reading for us at  www.clareville.co.uk