In recent days there has been lots of reporting and social media discussion about the changes we’ve proposed - and which Ofcom is now consulting on - to the amount of TV hours Newsround has to provide.
Some of that reporting and commentary has been a bit misleading and, in some cases, completely wrong. So let me explain why we’re making these changes.
Newsround has a really important job to do. Amid elections, Brexit and a changing world, the UK’s children have never needed a news source they can trust and understand more than they do now. No outlet does that better than Newsround.
No audience is clearer about how they want to consume their news than the UK’s children. In the last year we have seen Newsround’s online audience surge to close to 1m users a week, and viewing of the bulletin in schools has grown greatly to what we think is over 500,000 kids a week. Conversely, at the end of the day children aren’t coming home and switching on the TV for a news update meaning Newsround’s 4pm bulletin is only attracting 35,000 6-12 year olds. Which is why we welcome Ofcom’s consultation on changing their requirements on the way we provide high quality, trusted news just for children – which in turn will allow us to make a bigger impact online, and take public service journalism to more kids, at a time when fake news and a lack of trust in the media has never been more of a worry.
The current Ofcom consultation, if finalised, will mean that we will only need to provide 35 hours of live TV news a year, instead of 85. It is likely that this will mean the end of the afternoon bulletin but we would be able to move more resource into our online efforts, covering more topics in a range of ways. There will always be at least one TV news bulletin every day. If there's a major event or breaking news story that is important to our audience, we will increase our number of daily bulletins to reflect this.
This isn’t about saving money - the amount we spend on Newsround will stay the same. It’s about preserving Newsround and public service journalism for the next generation.
Like many of you, I grew up with the teatime bulletin. But the way our audiences consume has changed and this is a huge opportunity to take the best of what Newsround does to even more kids through our website and through the bulletin in schools. Nostalgia doesn’t mean we can avoid the reality that children today aren’t watching TV in the same way they used to even a few years ago - and if we’re going to help them understand the world around them we need to reach them in new ways.
Put simply, our audience’s needs are changing, if we don’t evolve as they do, we’ll lose them.