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Television United Kingdom Technology

TV News Overtaken By Digital Rivals For First Time in UK (ft.com) 38

Television has ceased to be the main source of news in the UK for the first time since the 1960s as Britons turn increasingly to online news and social media apps, according to research by the media regulator. From a report: Ofcom said on Tuesday that viewing of TV news had continued to fall steeply, with online platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok and digital versions of broadcasters now slightly more widely used as a source of news.ÂIn its annual study of audience habits, the watchdog said 71 per cent of adults obtained news online, compared with 70 per cent via TV -- a finding it described as "marking a generational shift in the balance of news media."

The reach of TV news has fallen from 75 per cent last year. More than four-fifths of people between the ages of 16 and 24 obtained their news from social media, Ofcom found. The report underlines the pressure on more traditional linear broadcasters such as the BBC, Sky and Channel 4 to accelerate moves to digital platforms, which include their own streaming sites as well as social media apps such as TikTok.Â

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TV News Overtaken By Digital Rivals For First Time in UK

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  • by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Wednesday September 11, 2024 @10:26AM (#64780185) Homepage Journal
    If the majority of people are getting their news from TikTok....the world is doomed.

    OH well...it was a nice run there for awhile.

    • The world will be fine. Just as with global warming. It's the people and the ecosystems that surround them that will all die in a strange plastic box and acetone accident. The planet will still be here.

      • It's the people and the ecosystems that surround them that will all die in a strange plastic box and acetone accident. The planet will still be here.

        It's not the planet I'm primarily concerned with....I mean, without the people...what difference does it make whether the planet exists or not to us?

        • Not part of it. Predict that this is all part of a "you will own nothing and be happy" move to knock down/kill off all realistic journalistic jobs so that any 'information' can be carefully curated by government/elites/ and the financial industry to keep paying sheep paying sheep.

          Break down existing media journalism, and what's left, a few independent talking heads on youtube?

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They said the same thing about TV news. Too short, to thin coverage, too much like entertainment.

      People don't just use TikTok, they get their news from a variety of sources online. It's often better than the TV news. Covers more topics, multiple sources, errors and lies can be more easily challenged. You can go as deep as you like on a story, rather than however much the editor thinks you should be told.

      • Given what I see my relatives, friends, their friends, and acquaintances post on Facebook, I think you're sadly mistaken. While you and I might dig deeper for news info, just about everyone else on social media doesn't.
    • The world was doomed when people got their news from television instead of the newspapers. This lead to a cultural shift in journalism, and a very shallow soundbite understand of current events by the general populace. We already passed peak democracy decades ago, this is an era of decline masked by exciting technology and artificial economic growth.

  • by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Wednesday September 11, 2024 @10:29AM (#64780199)
    I don't want to be "broadcasted" too. I prefer a two-way conversation which the internet affords.
    • Though most of it consists of rants, conspiracists and invectives

      • Which you're perfectly free to ignore.
        • Most people's ubqualified are less than useless. Listening to "both sides" gives a huge advantage to people hell bent on simply gumming up the works.

          • by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
            Once you've hit the point where people pick sides and openly hope for the death of people on the other side, you've reached peak news meme-ification. It's pretty sad since most people have a lot in common, but decide to judge each other based on what politicians say is "the most important issue EVER!"
            • Deep divisions over some of the most pointless bullshit is pretty standard fare in human relationships. Multiple civil wars in history have been fought over meaningless distinctions of ethnicity, religion, etc. Might as well be about which end you crack your eggs. Even though the US's last civil war was technically about slavery, it wasn't quite as a clear cut moral battle as we sometimes romanticize it to be. It wasn't that the North wanted Blacks to be free, they just didn't want the South to have so much

        • Except if you're gullible, as the masses are. Just as in this quote from Men In Black. "A person is smart, people are dumb." When it's relayed on the social media, people become as dumb as a crowd.

          Those who tend to follow the masses are the most prone to be tricked and skewed by online half truths, or by downright "Truths" from Truth Social or X posts. What we could call "The 80%". In the 20% remaining, you have those of us who can really think for themselves.
          • Perhaps its that people think they are smarter than the crowed. Everyone is prone to be tricked or skewed I see no evidence that just because they are part of the media, or academia they are not.

            From https://www.forbes.com/sites/b... [forbes.com]

            Well-educated people with their cognitive abilities intact frequently are victims of scams, partly because they were confident they didn’t fit the profile of fraud victims and couldn’t fall for one. That made them less careful.

            To me one of the major factors of being scammed is the belief that you are too smart to be conned.

            Can groups be manipulated, hell yes, but if you think are somehow immune to that think how that doesn't make sense.

    • You're going to have a "two-way" with the journalist reporting on kids being killed by bombs in ukraine (or wherever) are you?

    • ...right.

      Can you have a 2-way conversation with a news org (CNN, MSN, etc etc ad nauseam) who've taken away their comments section because they can't *stand* opposing views and call them "hate speech?"

      No. What you think doesn't matter to the news people. Only what they get told to say to you matters.

      The naivete, it hurts.

    • A left wing outlet called the Young Turks recently turned hard right. It started with some easily debunked anti-trans nonsense and now they're flirting with anti-vax conspiracy theories. I can follow the money and I know why they did it. Their viewership has slipped since 2016 and they've been soaking up some cash from a multi-millionaire ex-democrat.

      If I was stuck with traditional media I'd just be stuck with their bias coverage and forced to glean what I could from them.

      Instead I can unsub, block
      • A left wing outlet called the Young Turks recently turned hard right. It started with some easily debunked anti-trans nonsense and now they're flirting with anti-vax conspiracy theories. I can follow the money and I know why they did it. Their viewership has slipped since 2016 and they've been soaking up some cash from a multi-millionaire ex-democrat.

        I dunno, calling the Young Turks "hard right" when they are just not catering to progressives as hard says more about you than the Young Turks.

  • by Hoi Polloi ( 522990 ) on Wednesday September 11, 2024 @10:37AM (#64780237) Journal

    I always prefer text vs video and it is one reason I don't watch tv news, or any video news, much. I can read faster than they can show the story. I can also skip past the opening fluff and get to the point of it. I also avoid the "tragic news today" head shaking that starts everything bad and the sad pause at the end. Just give me the news. If a link takes me to a video only site I search until I find a site with a text article. I only watch a video if it is crucial to the story and even then I want text with it.

  • I don't know about the UK but here in America Election coverage has been terrible, with several outlets just plain carrying water for Donald Trump.

    The New York Times ran the headline " President Trump, an Unlikely Champion of Affordable Child Care [nytimes.com]" in response to this:

    "Well, I would do that and we're sitting down, you know, I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka was sooo..uh..impactful on that issue. It's very important issue But I think when you talk about the kind of number

    • Are you trying to say that the NYTimes is a Republican/Conservative mouthpiece? Did you read their coverage of the Steele Dossier being completely disproven and the Hunter Biden laptop articles they wrote before the election? Oh you couldn't because they propped those lies up for some reason and integrity was not one of them.

      • Their owners certainly run in the kind of circles where money talks though I don't think they're owned by a billionaire like wapo is.

        They are very much in favor of the establishment though and I think a lot of people in the establishment are nervous Kamala Harris is going to move further to the left than they are comfortable with.

        But on the other hand there I still journalists working at the New York Times who want to run a newspaper and do real journalism. And as the old joke goes reality has a lib
  • by Rogue Bender ( 10263810 ) on Wednesday September 11, 2024 @11:02AM (#64780355)

    The BBC & SKY news channels have become magazine shows and increasingly are simply re-broadcasting output from other sources. e.g. 10 Sept BBC, SKY, and GBNews were all simply rebroadcasting the BBC Parliament channel and pasting social media comments over the top.

    I'm afraid that is not news, especially when there is no meaningful attempt to present analysis and summation of what has gone before.

    Presenters (they ain't journalists) frequently talk more than their interviewees who in turn are seldom allowed to finish a sentence let alone get their point across. I very rarely watch the 6pm or 10pm news shows and have given up completely on all of the breakfast shows who seem to have picked two or three stories from the overnight social media feeds, collected up a handful of opinionated charlatans with diametrically opposing views, and then try and stir up an incident that will be reported in social media later in the day. Bonus points if it goes viral.

  • BBC News was captured by Conservative party supporters over the last decade, new explicitly right wing minor TV news channels popped up in that time & right wing politicians went to war on any critical commentary after 14 years in power. Is no surprise that youngsters abandoned broadcast news so badly aligned with their opinions or even a credible pretence of balance. I'm in my 60s, with pretty universal dislike of all political extremes and even I stopped watching broadcast news 5+ years ago.

    Bad as onl

  • This means your government will reduce the TV taxes you pay.
    When government services become obsolete, they are promptly discontinued and defunded so those resources can be returned to the masses.

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