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Each person watches 12 hours less of news programmes a year compared to five years ago, according to Ofcom's annual Public Service Broadcasting Annual report .

The study includes in depth assessments of news coverage and viewers' opinions for the five main PSB channels, BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Five.

It found that national news viewing has dropped from 100 hours per individual, per year in 2005 to 88 hours in 2009.

According to the report, the main drop was on ITV1, where news viewing dropped by 11 hours, compared to three hours a year on BBC Two and Five, and one hour a year on Channel 4.

However, viewing on BBC One remained at a higher level than the other channels, increasing by four hours over the past five years.

The volume of news broadcasts during the day has not seen much change, increasing by an average of just one per cent a year to 5,604 hours in 2009, while costs for daytime news have dropped from £210m in 2005, to £171m in 2009.

Peak time news has risen to 925 hours, meaning it has nearly returned to 2005 levels after a dip in 2006/2007 when the seven o'clock news bulletin was removed from BBC Three. Peak time costs have grown from £61m in 2005 to £76m in 2009, which the report claims is due to the return of ITV's News at Ten.

Coverage across British nations

The report did raise concerns over a lack of regional coverage.

According to the statistics, an average of only nine per cent of Scottish, six per cent of Welsh and three per cent of Irish viewers rated national channels highly for covering big events.

This compares to an average of 84 per cent of English respondents.

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Written by
Rachel Bartlett

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