Recent Sky News/News 24 ratings

ITV1 and BBC One aren't offering a 24 hour news service, though.

On the EPG, I doubt many people are going to distinguish between 'Sky News' and 'BBC News'. People can distinguish between 'DIY SOS' and 'Life Begins'

"The rapid growth of digital TV penetration continues to be driven primarily by Freeview" - the Guardian. The fact is that Freeview is growing at a vastly quicker rate than Sky. Sky added 180,000 people in the same period Freeview added about 700,000 people. It is that stark.

The fact is, you're an idiot and don't know what you're talking about.

Well no you can't talk down people of different opinions, and to be honest I agree with many of his arguements.
Sky News is available on Freeview along with BBC News 24. The audience makes a decision between the two and recently (due to a number of aspects) more people have chosen to watch News 24, simple fact.
Sky News will probably see a surge of renewed interest following the re-launch its just that currently more people are watching News 24 output than Sky's, this has happened to both channels in the past and probably will continue until the cows come home.
Im sure we won't hear these arguements if/when Sky News becomes favourite again.

I would imagine the main reason why Sky News does better on Sky Digital is because there's still a substantial number of subscribers who have had Sky since the analogue days when Sky News was the only British news channel, and so they've stuck with it as it's known and trusted to them.

Most people who have Freeview are relatively new to multi-channel TV, and so would be more likely to go for a familiar brand like the BBC. It would also go towards explaining why the ITV News Channel does better on Freeview than on Sky Digital (when it's available on Freeview of course!).

Well, sorry, matey, it's not a ''simple fact'', that's why we've got three pages of discussion about it.

Your defending his OPINIONS - which is fine - but he is putting across his opinions as FACT - which is not. It is entirely pointless comparing BBC One and ITV1 to Sky News and BBC News 24.

I find it very hard to understand how you can support his opinion that Freeview has absolutely nothing to do with it, when it is patently obvious to anyone who's had even the most fleeting glance at the figures that it's 100% to do with Freeview.

It's also not the case that Sky News is suffering from disinterest on the part of the viewers. They're getting some of their highest figures ever for big events - remember at the outbreak of the Iraq war they were the third most watched channel in multichannel homes, a figure they couldn't have dreamed of about 6 or 7 years ago. It is the case that new Freeview viewers are just going by default to News 24 without even sampling Sky, and that's been happening for some time.

In 20 years time, when the BBC will have all but abandoned news on mainstread channels, we'll have News 24 slaughtering the opposition, unless they do something now. Newsnight, Question Time, Six O'clock News, they'll probably all shift over eventually.

OK, Freeview has grown, but it is still not as big as Sky. So if sky people apparently "prefer" sky news over News 24 why doesn't Sky news have more viewers than news 24?

I read somewhere the other day suggesting freeview was on the verge of overtaking sky, so cat, I fully agree with what you said! The vast majority of freeviewers are people who hate the concept of 'pay-tv' and indeed Murdoch, so thats why they just default straight to news 24 and itv news (clearly blinded by the fact that the latter is just a pile of crap which i wont go into in this thread) because they are brands they have known for the past 50yrs through terrestrial tv. Sky probably hasnt lost a huge amount of viewers, it just hasnt gained viewers as quickly as news 24 for the reasons that cat has already stated.

itv news as a 'brand' has only been around since 1999.

But people arent stupid! They'll realise what they see on 'ITV news channel' comes from the same people who've put 'news at 10' and other bulletins on their ITV region for the past 50yrs - and it was in 2001 when 'ITV news' came into being actually.

No, it was 1999 the same year that News at Ten was axed and replaced with the Nightly News.

But reporters still signed off 'ITN' at the end of reports until 2001.

In 1999 the ITN name was used on astons, and at the end of reports, and the programme was always referred to as coming from 'the studios of ITN'. ITV was only ever mentioned in passing as its logo was shown at the begining of the programme, and only then. Only in 2001, was the name 'ITN' totally dumped from all areas of screen, to be replaced with 'itv news'. Theres a sizeable difference between having 'itv' mentioned only once during the titles, and then for it to be used at all times throughout the programme, in particular at the end of reports.

There are still more Sky Digital homes than Freeview homes.

So arguments about Freeview viewers being more loyal to the BBC etc can explain Sky's performance only up to the point of equality of audiences in the figures.

And they're not equal.

News 24 is ahead and pulling clear, regularly getting DOUBLE the audience of Sky News.

So regardless of any "Freeview" effect (where the channels are 1 space apart in the EPG), News 24 is presumably still equal (if not ahead) of Sky News on Sky Digital (where the channels are 2 slots apart- 6 spaces in numerical terms).

Don't know about NTL, but Telewest also place Sky News earlier in the EPG than News 24.

I think however you look at it, believing that News 24's rating dominance is solely down to Freeview is a bit naive.

I fully expect Sky to surge ahead of News 24 after their relaunch on live news hours (Sky News Live presumably- from the Fox model). However, I just have a feeling that any Fox-like evening hours led by the likes of Burley, Thompson et al will flop horribly with the British audience. I think if/when their strategy fails, pressure on Pollard will grow.