Just over a fifth of US adults now regularly get news from influencers on social media, a new Pew-Knight Initiative survey has found.

An analysis of who those influencers are indicated few of the most popular accounts for news online have ever formally worked in journalism and that they are more likely to lean right than left.

The findings come as the US media grapples with the result of the the 2024 presidential election and what it means for the reach and influence of professional journalism.

The survey, published on Monday, canvassed 10,658 US adults this summer and was weighted to be demographically representative of the US population.

Of those surveyed, 21% said they “regularly” get news from influencers. That figure rose to 37% among US adults aged 29 and below and 26% among those between 30 and 49.

Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans were more likely than the average US adult to regularly get news from influencers, at 27%, 30% and 29% respectively. Lower income Americans (26%) were the most likely socioeconomic bracket to get news this way and women (23%) were more likely to do so than men (19%).

Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Americans who said they got news from news influencers rated the content positively, saying it “helped them better understand current events and civic issues”.

About a quarter said it made little difference to their understanding of the world while 9% said it made them “more confused”. About six in ten (58%) said they follow or subscribe to at least one news influencer.

There was little difference between right-leaning (21%) and left-leaning (22%) people in how likely they were to get news from social media influencers – even though the influencers themselves were more likely to create right-leaning content.

[Read more: From James O’Brien to Joe Rogan — Rise of news influencers and alternative voices]

Top US news influencers are mostly male and lean right

As well as the survey, the Pew researchers looked at a sample of 500 “news influencers”, defined as individuals who had used news-related keywords in early 2024 who had a minimum of 100,000 followers. across X (formerly Twitter), Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok or Facebook.

Figures captured within the research included the likes of podcasters Joe Rogan and Felix Biederman, NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, psychologist and Trump family member Mary L Trump, Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, journalists Piers Morgan, Megyn Kelly and Katie Couric, lawyer Alan Dershowitz and actress Alyssa Milano.

Less than a quarter (23%) of the news influencers sampled had ever worked for a news organisation. On X (formerly Twitter) the proportion of news influencers with ties to a news organisation rose to 26%, whereas on Youtube it fell to 12%.

Most of the 500 news influencers did not self-identify as right or left. Of those that did, 27% explicitly identified as Republican, conservative or supportive of Donald Trump and 21% as Democrats, liberal or Kamala Harris supporters.

The influencers who had worked in news were less likely to explicitly disclose a political orientation (with 64% staying unaligned, versus 44% of those without a traditional news affiliation), but those who did articulate a position were more likely to be right-leaning (25%) than left (9%).

Instagram was the most explicitly political platform for news influencers, with 55% of the creators there disclosing an orientation (30% right, 25% left). Although Facebook had a higher proportion of ostensibly unaligned news influencers, it also had the biggest proportion of right-leaning news influencers (39%, compared with 13% who were left-leaning).

Tiktok was the most left-leaning platform, with 28% of news influencers explicitly identifying themselves as left-leaning compared with 25% right-leaning.

Most (63%) of the news influencers assessed were men. Tiktok was the most gender-balanced platform, with 50% of the news influencers there men and 45% women. Youtube was the least balanced: 68% of the news influencers on the video platform were men versus 28% women.

X was the most used platform among news influencers, with 85% of the 500 assessed present there. Half had an Instagram account, 44% posted to Youtube, 32% to Facebook, 30% to Threads, 27% to Tiktok and 12% to Linkedin.

Of the 500 news influencers, 59% were monetising their presence. The most common way of doing this was through subscriptions (49%), with 29% accepting donations and 21% selling merchandise. The proportion monetising their accounts rose to 74% on Tiktok, 77% on Facebook and 80% on Youtube.

A third (34%) of the influencers also host a podcast and 22% have a newsletter.

The Pew research incorporated ChatGPT into its methodology. The chatbot was handed text and transcribed audio from the influencer accounts and asked to analyse the content to determine whether the influencers identified themselves, for example, as left or right. A human researcher then spot-checked 1% of the results to check they were accurate, and the error rate was included in the research.

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Video has become “the focus for everything” at The Sun over the past year with increased investment following the closure of TalkTV.

The Sun’s biggest example, Youtube-based political show Never Mind the Ballots, is now returning weekly after a summer break, backed by new sponsorship from Betfair.

Hosted by political editor Harry Cole, Never Mind the Ballots launched in March and secured a number of scoops during the UK general election period, when it aired five days a week. It was the only non-broadcaster to hold back-to-back live audience questions with Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak.

The Sun has 5.7 million followers on Youtube and views of Never Mind the Ballots have typically registered in the tens of thousands on the Alphabet-owned platform.

But according to The Sun, the series has had over 30 million views since launch across Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook as well as Youtube and The Sun website.

The show takes a “360-degree” approach to storytelling, Cole told Press Gazette. The main programme is filmed on Thursday morning and airs in the evening on Youtube and The Sun’s website, but it is also repackaged into short shareable video snippets and online stories, with some coverage carrying over into the next day’s paper.

The Sun has its own studio at its London Bridge headquarters. News UK closed its linear TV news channel TalkTV in the summer and is instead focusing investment on News Studios, which is creating video content across The Sun, The Times and Sunday Times, Talksport, Virgin Radio, Piers Morgan Uncensored and Talkradio to go out via their websites and apps, streaming and social platforms including Youtube and Tiktok.

Betfair is to going to sponsor three special editions of Never Mind the Ballots which will have a US focus in the run-up to the presidential election, including a leaders’ debate watch-along and polling day special edition.

Cole told Press Gazette he is looking forward to airing exclusive analysis of Betfair gambling data, noting: “Opinion polls did not have a great election. People willing to put their money where the mouths are could give us a better insight.”

He noted that Never Mind The Ballots has already gained traction in the US with its reports from the G7 Summit in June which revealed how “doddery” Joe Biden was “losing focus” and concentration leading to concern from insiders.

Cole said: “The American press weren’t touching it.” The story proved to be a particular hit for The Sun on Tiktok.

He noted that Keir Starmer’s statement about deporting Bangladeshi immigrants to the UK during The Sun’s Election Showdown live readers’ event prompted huge traffic on The Sun website after it was widely shared via Whatsapp groups.

Asked whether The Sun’s leader column support for Keir Starmer had been an uncomfortable moment for him, given the title’s long-standing opposition to Labour, he said: “It was clear the country wanted a change and wanted the Tories to take a very long bath.

“Everyone wanted change. We are a patriotic newspaper and we want the country to do well.”

Cole is also adding to his responsibilities by taking over the prestigious Monday political comment slot in the newspaper vacated by Trevor Kavanagh after the election.

He said: “At a time of untrammelled Labour domination in Westminster, a Tory opposition in tatters and Nigel Farage on the march, there’s going to be plenty of feet to hold to the fire.”

Sun editor-in-chief Victoria Newton said of the weekly political show: “Over the past year, video has become the focus for everything we do and has been at the heart of our coverage of big events, big exclusives, and our new studio video series produced by News Studios are finding highly engaged global audiences.

“The Sun’s unique character features within all the shows – showing the unique place of popular journalism to engage huge audiences and help them dissect the news.

“Our partnership with Betfair is an exciting opportunity for us, and one that shows the value of Never Mind The Ballots.”

Sun commercial revenue director Owen Griffiths said: “Never Mind the Ballots’ exemplifies The Sun’s ambition to transfer the power of our journalism into creating best-in-class video content for a video-first audience. The engagement with the UK series was beyond expectation and we are excited to build on this momentum with our coverage of the US election.”

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Top political podcasts saw downloads rise 50% or more during the 2024 UK general election, according to their publishers, leading one to dub it “the first podcast election”.

Press Gazette has heard from podcast company Acast, hosting platform Spotify and publishers including the BBC, Telegraph, Politico and Sky, who all report significant listenership growth over the election.

Although podcast publishers are secretive about numbers Press Gazette estimates market leader The Rest Is Politics is likely to have achieved more than ten million downloads in June. No-one from publisher Goalhanger responded to requests for comment.

Update: On 6 August Goalhanger put out a press release stating The Rest is Politics and sister interview podcast Leading together saw combined total downloads and full episode Youtube views of more than 21.6 million in the election campaign period between 22 May and 5 July. This meant they were getting more than 700,000 audio downloads an episode.

Co-host Alastair Campbell said: “It fills me with hope that so many people tuned into our show across the general election. Rory [Stewart] and I aim to fly the flag for balanced debate and real clarity amidst the constant noise of 24-hour rolling news, and we’re delighted to see our audience respond in such positive ways.”

‘Truly the first podcast election’

Podcast production and hosting company Acast told Press Gazette that, “from the announcement through the week of the election, our political podcasts saw an average growth of 53%”.

Sam Shetabi, Acast’s UK content director, added that “podcasting in general has a bit of a summer lull between June and August… whereas all of our news podcasts have completely bucked that trend”.

He said that Political Currency, the Persephonica and Acast podcast featuring former politicians George Osborne and Ed Balls, had been “a superstar” within the group, seeing episode downloads rise 81% between the week the election was called and the week it ended.

Besides Political Currency, he said, the FT’s Political Fix grew by 39%, The Guardian’s Today in Focus grew 47% and The Times’ How To Win An Election grew 43%.

He added the growth had been “greater than that of a lot of our football shows”, despite the surge in listening for those podcasts amid the Euros.

A spokesperson for Spotify, one of the biggest podcast hosting platforms, painted a similar picture, telling Press Gazette: “Total hours played of news and politics podcasts in the UK have increased by 49% over the last 12 months.

“Listeners in the UK to news and politics podcasts have increased 6% over the last 12 months, so there’s been a slight increase in the number of people listening, but a big increase in how long they’re listening for.

“The Rest is Politics is the top political podcast in June 2024, and in 2024 overall [the BBC’s] Newscast has seen the most growth over the last year, increasing its listenership by 64%.”

The BBC, which has increasingly been trying to direct its podcast audiences toward its own platform BBC Sounds, said Sounds saw a record number of listeners on the morning following the election.

A spokesperson said: “Eight out of ten UK adults came to the BBC across all platforms as audiences tuned in to BBC election coverage in their millions.

“The week of the general election was the biggest week for BBC News on BBC Sounds in at least the last 18 months, with results day (5 July) the second biggest day on BBC Sounds overall. We also saw significant audience interest in our election podcasts.”

Other publishers also furnished Press Gazette directly with figures about their increases.

Global said that The News Agents, hosted by former BBC presenters Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall, is nearing 100 million all-time downloads and that “listens are up 45% since the general election was called”. The podcast hit 10 million downloads in December 2022, three months after launch.

The Telegraph’s The Daily T, which launched only shortly before the election was called and hosted the first election trail interview with Rishi Sunak, told Press Gazette its election night and results day episodes “performed on average 45% above a typical episode’s performance”.

“The Rishi Sunak interview was listened to 84% more times than the average episode,” a spokesperson for the publisher added, and “podcast listens the week of the election were 2.7 times higher than the week prior to the election announcement.”

[Read more: Why Telegraph’s Tominey and Ahmed think there is room for another daily podcast]

Politics at Jack and Sam’s, a co-production between Politico and Sky News presented by the former’s UK editor Jack Blanchard and the latter’s deputy political editor Sam Coates, has hit two million downloads since it launched in October.

It had its most successful week following the election, “with more than double the listeners on Monday 8 July than the week before”.

Another Sky podcast, Electoral Dysfunction — fronted by political editor Beth Rigby and politicians Ruth Davidson and Jess Phillips — has also hit two million downloads, having launched in March.

Sky said Electoral Dysfunction was “growing week on week and achieving above our targets” and that its election debrief episode the day after the vote “was the most successful episode to date, with a 40% increase in audience”.

Both the podcasts saw record downloads in June, the publishers said — in part because they increased their frequency, with Electoral Dysfunction going up to twice a week and Politics at Jack and Sam’s going out every weekday.

Dave Terris, the head of audio at Sky News, said it had been “truly the first podcast election”.

“During an average day on the campaign trail, our political editor Beth Rigby and deputy political editor Sam Coates would write an analysis for online, do a TV package for the News at Ten and then discuss the big political news of the moment on Electoral Dysfunction, Politics at Jack and Sam’s and the Sky News Daily…

“Both Electoral Dysfunction and Politics at Jack and Sam’s have reached two million downloads. Considering that nine months ago neither of these propositions existed, we’re extremely pleased to see how they’ve been received.”

Will the influx of new listeners stick around now the election is over?

That listeners would take an interest in politics during an election does not necessarily mean that they will stick around once it’s over. But Acast’s Shetabi said: “We would expect there to be a nice long tail that you retain…

“They will favour one of those shows that they particularly enjoyed listening to over this election period, and I expect there to be growth in all of those shows that continues for the rest of the year.”

Asked how advertisers had taken to the growth of political podcasting given the well-publicised reticence of brands to advertise against some hard news, Shetabi said: “I think there was some nervousness around the election period itself… lots of brands chose to try to [advertise against] other content, and also because we had the Euros there were lots of other opportunities for lots of other ears to reach.”

But he added: “What we have seen with advertisers is if they’ve changed their plans, they’ve moved campaigns to later in the summer, rather than cancel them.

“There’s not really a sensitivity around news and politics per se. It’s more around the current context [of an election].”

Meanwhile, Politico’s executive director of advertising and partnerships for Europe, Rolant Glyn, told Press Gazette: “We’ve had sustained interest from new advertisers to engage with our podcasting output and, in particular, Politics at Jack and Sam’s since its launch.

“The increased number of listeners and subscribers shows an appetite to hear from Jack and Sam’s unique perspective on British politics which we’re expecting to contribute to revenue growth in the second half of the year.”

Podcasters are secretive about exact listener numbers

Unlike radio, television or (to a decreasing extent) print circulations, there is no auditor for podcast audience sizes.

Although multiple publishers were generous enough to provide Press Gazette with data on how their listenership had increased over the election, none were willing to hand over average episode download or monthly listener numbers.

However, Press Gazette did gain access to a copy of the media kit for Goalhanger, the Gary Lineker-founded publisher of the most popular politics podcast, The Rest is Politics.

The media kit appears to date from before the launch of the also highly popular The Rest is Politics USA (which debuted this year) and The Rest is Entertainment (which debuted in November 2023). It claims The Rest is Politics receives eight million downloads monthly, making it the second most popular podcast in Goalhanger’s stable after The Rest is History, which receives ten million downloads monthly.

The Rest is Football, Goalhanger’s third most popular podcast, was on three million downloads a month at the time the kit was issued and The Rest is Money, hosted by Robert Peston and Steph McGovern, was on 500,000.

The publisher said listeners average 40 minutes per episode, that two-thirds of its audience are aged 28 to 59 and 70% of its audience is male.

Which UK political podcasts were popular on Youtube during the UK general election

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do display in-app leaderboards showing which podcasts are most popular, both overall and by topic. Press Gazette has captured the top ten from both leaderboards on Wednesday 17 July below.

Although neither Apple nor Spotify display audience numbers, one other popular podcast medium, Youtube, does.

BBC research, previously reported by Press Gazette, has suggested that approximately one-third of podcast consumers prefer to watch their podcasts than listen to them — something reflected in the popularity of so-called “vodcasts” like The Joe Rogan Experience.

The profile and tastes of these video podcast listeners likely differ in some regards from audio-only podcast consumers, and not all podcasts are published to Youtube. However, because the data is public, it is possible to see how those podcasts that do publish to the video platform fare in relation to one another.

If you have any other podcast listener data to share, let us know at bron.maher@pressgazette.co.uk.

The data shows that on Youtube, too, The Rest is Politics was the most popular UK politics podcast of the election, garnering more than 4.2 million views on podcasts uploaded between the date the election was called and Wednesday 17 June. (Press Gazette has refreshed the above chart twice after publishers requested inclusion. First, the day after publication, to add four additional podcasts: Channel 4's Political Fourcast, Joe Media Group's Politics Joe, Crooked Media's Pod Save the UK and IFS Zooms in from the Institute for Fiscal Studies; second, on 22 July, to add TLDR News' podcast and Novara Media's Novara Live.)

Illustrating the extent to which vodcast and podcast audiences can differ, the second most popular political podcast was that of The New Statesman, which received 3.2 million views. On Spotify and Apple Podcasts The New Statesman Podcast ranks 34th and 32nd respectively at time of writing. (Similarly Politics Joe, which is 71st on Apple, and 29th on Spotify, is fourth on Youtube, and Channel 4's Fourcast, which is second place on Youtube, comes in at 159th on Apple and does not rank at all on Spotify's 50-strong leaderboard.)

The New Statesman (a sister title of Press Gazette) told us after the publication of this story that across all its Youtube content, regardless of publication date, it received 5,212,722 views between 23 May and 18 July. Although we excluded shortform Youtube Shorts from this analysis, the NS channel's Shorts published since 23 May have received 1,484,157 views.

The News Agents was third-ranked among the Youtube podcasts, nearing two million views.

It is also possible to plot how podcast releases performed.

Most podcast publishers on Youtube use the medium to host both their audio products and their general video content. But for the handful of publishers on the above list that mainly use their Youtube channels to host their podcast, it is possible to see use the platform's publicly-available channel subscriber figures to see how subscriptions to certain podcasts on Youtube grew over the election.

Acast's Shetabi told Press Gazette the growth across podcasts during the election showed the market still has plenty of space for new entrants

“The audience size is only growing," he said.

"The election period proved that — all of these shows grew to some extent because people were discovering new shows and new perspective, new angles... You're not going to say that two of these shows in the top 20 news and politics podcasts are the same."

Additional reporting by Amy Seal and Juliana Pamiloza.

The post ‘The first podcast election’: Political podcasts explode in run-up to polling day appeared first on Press Gazette.

The flagship political podcast of Channel 4 News has found success by effectively ditching audio platforms and instead publishing to Youtube.

The Political Fourcast achieved more than 100,000 Youtube views on average for each episode it published during the UK general election campaign — second only, among the political podcasts Press Gazette assessed, to market leader The Rest is Politics.

Launched in late 2020, the podcast began life as an audio product, Channel 4 News head of digital Mike Deri Smith told Press Gazette last week. But, he said, “we never quite found success with it”.

“We didn’t have the app or the huge news website… or walled garden to power listeners through [to the content].

“So we thought: ‘You know what, we’ve got to lean into our expertise and do it as video.’”

He said they now “sort of wish we had launched as video on day one, because that’s what all the other podcasts are doing these days”.

[‘The first podcast election’: Political podcasts explode in run-up to polling day]

Channel 4 News leaning into expertise in video and correspondents

Unlike prominent audio-only political podcasts such as The News Agents, The Rest is Politics or Electoral Dysfunction, The Political Fourcast is not built around conversation between two or three permanent hosts. It is more laid-back than a Channel 4 News bulletin, but largely foregoes the chattier tone some competitors take.

Instead it resembles a more traditional political analysis television programme like Newsnight, with a Channel 4 News presenter such as Krishnan Guru-Murthy or Lindsey Hilsum facilitating a discussion between experts or politicians.

Deri Smith told Press Gazette: “We know how to make video work, so when we did the podcast as a vodcast, with the quality, the broadcast, the studio, we realised that could be a real selling point, and that could be a point of distinction for us, rather than trying to compete with a very, very crowded field.

“We thought: we can lean into the expertise of our correspondents rather than doing opinion and lean into our expertise of how to make a really quality video output.”

Asked how The Political Fourcast differs now it is a video podcast or “vodcast” rather than a traditional audio podcast, Deri Smith said: “We think about how the studio is going to look. We think about the interaction between the guests.

“We’re not just trying to do the same two people speaking each time, so we’re really thinking ‘who’s the panel? What is a way of us moving this conversation forwards?’ rather than it being the two same politicians or the two same presenters every time.

“[We’re] trying to think what is a studio line-up, what is a really good conversation that we can have that can really get a lot of knowledge and expertise shared among the panel.”

Deri Smith said The Political Fourcast was not “the same sort of opinion-driven content as perhaps others are doing”.

“The medium is evolving,” he said. The podcast is “not two people who are like: ‘Oh, what did you get up to yesterday?’ It doesn’t just need to be a chatty thing. It doesn’t just need to be a true crime thing. It’s also professionalising and becoming more like broadcast. Youtube is looking more like TV, and podcasts need to step up.

“And they can’t just be a Zoom recording you chuck on the internet and hope works. It needs to evolve, it has to professionalise. And so for Channel 4 News, with our expertise, it has to look like Channel 4 News — it can’t be a ropey version of it, it has to be as good as the broadcast, linear version of the output because we hold it to the same standards.”

How going Youtube-first helped The Political Fourcast find new audiences

Deri Smith suggested that, for The Fourcast, going Youtube-first had fixed one of the biggest problems professional podcasters face: discoverability.

Often the only ways for new podcasts to reach potential new listeners are through word of mouth, recommendations in other media or through expensive marketing campaigns. But Youtube, Deri Smith said, is “quite egalitarian because it’s so driven by how much people are actually watching [a channel], how much people are clicking on it”.

“We already have a really strong face on Youtube, and it’s always been a very consistent algorithm that we understand.

“If people watch it for a long time, the algorithm will recommend it, so quality rises to the top. People expect, from even a vodcast, a higher quality product in the production as well as in the editorial.” Each episode of The Fourcast has an average watch time of between 15 and 17 minutes, Deri Smith said.

Publishing to Youtube also had implications for the kind of audience the podcast was getting.

“We’re not just trying to cater to the same 10,000 people who are downloading, of which, who knows, maybe only 2,000 are listening every time,” Deri Smith said.

“We’re reaching 100,000 people who we know are listening for ten, 15 minutes on average every single time. So we know those views are ones you can really rely on.”

Ed Fraser, managing editor of Channel 4 News, said the publisher had “taken a bet here that… video is where the growth in the podcast market, certainly for us, really lies”.

Podcasts, he said, “thrive on conversation and unique perspectives, and we’re embracing that deep conversational style alongside the key ingredients of Channel 4 News to bring something special to every episode…

“I think that comes across — what you’re watching is not just a podcast. You are watching a mini television news programme, a conversational programme which plays to all the strengths of Channel 4 News.”

That extends to visual details: The Political Fourcast is recorded in the Channel 4 News studio in London, rearranged to give it a more lounge-like feel.

Orthodox podcasting opinion advises that publishers should find a regular publishing schedule and stick to it, but The Fourcast releases episodes at more irregular intervals, averaging about five per month.

Deri Smith said they had previously been publishing The Fourcast every week “but we realised that we need to approach every podcast as an emergency vodcast, in the way that we want to be super reactive, rather than three days late, even though it’s video and that takes longer”.

This approach of recording podcasts immediately after major news events has been adopted by other prominent publishers including The Rest is Politics and The News Agents.

“We still want to be faster, even, than the audio output that’s sometimes spending a day in sound design,” Deri Smith said. “We’re trying to be a few hours.”

But ‘computer says no’ to coverage of sensitive topics on Youtube

Youtube is not without its drawbacks, however.

Fraser said: “With Youtube what we find is they are what they call ‘age-gating’ content, which means it is blocked off to viewers, effectively, unless they are signed in and subscribed and aged over 18.

“So a lot of our strong coverage from Gaza has been age-gated by Youtube. And that’s something we’ve been pushing back on, and something which we’ve had very high-level discussions and talks with them about, but they are immovable.

“When you push them, they will review a video, but they will come back with a ‘computer says no’, that their decision sticks. Often it’s because there is stuff in it which is emotive, which they consider harm and offence, but under the obligations that we work to under Ofcom that would not be categorised as something which would breach harm and offence, and we do that to a very professional level.”

Deri Smith said a video which hadn’t been blocked might get “five million views at the height of the Israel-Gaza war.

“When it does get blocked, you might get 20,000.”

Fraser added: “The politicians believed that when they negotiated the Online Safety Act that there would be journalistic carve-outs which would mean this kind of thing would not happen.

“In effect, it’s happening anyway. So because that Act has not come into full force yet, Youtube are sticking with their current modus operandi.”

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News UK’s TalkTV has hit one million subscribers on Youtube, three months after the closure of its linear TV channel.

The channel also told Press Gazette that digital revenues are up, with July set to be its biggest-ever for revenue on Youtube specifically.

TalkTV launched in April 2022, initially by focusing on a primetime evening television offering alongside visualised content from Talkradio in the daytime.

Two years on, in April this year TalkTV had its final day on linear TV, where it had been available on Freeview, Freesat, Sky and Virgin Media.

News UK EVP, president of broadcasting Scott Taunton explained that a “large proportion” of live viewing was already through streaming on TVs rather than traditional channel viewing, alongside clips being shared on social media, and the investment needed to go “on where the eyeballs are and where the revenues are in growth” instead of expensive linear slot fees.

As well as Talkradio on DAB and smart speakers, the visual TalkTV content is still available through the Talk app as well as on Youtube.

The Youtube channel airs Talk’s live programming as well as shorter clips from its shows of any length up to about 20 minutes.

News UK told Press Gazette on Friday that TalkTV’s Youtube subscribers have grown by 185% in 18 months to take it above the one million mark.

The publisher also said TalkTV, under the tagline of “the home of common sense”, is now receiving more than 50 million views per month on Youtube.

A snapshot of the channel’s latest 30 videos which had been posted for more than a day at the time of writing (Friday afternoon) showed those clips had gained on average 38,000 views each.

News Broadcasting director of digital Derek Brown said: “Talk is enjoying healthy digital growth. Revenues are up, international audiences are expanding and it is in prime position to embrace the digital future of viewing habits.

“Everyone from the presenters to the producers understand their audience intimately, they’ve all done a great job in hitting the one million milestone.”

Dennie Morris, director of audio at News Broadcasting, added: “The numbers speak for themselves when it comes to the content being produced by Talk, and how it’s being consumed by listeners and viewers.”

On radio alone, Talkradio had a weekly reach of 757,000 people in the first quarter of 2024, according to the latest RAJAR figures.

The individual Youtube channel for Piers Morgan Uncensored, which was TalkTV’s flagship show before it separated out and went digital-only in February, reached one million subscribers last year and three million earlier this month.

Morgan’s recent hit videos have included interviews with the alleged real-life Baby Reindeer stalker Fiona Harvey, her alleged first victim, and disgraced actor Armie Hammer who is accused of sexual abuse and of whom Morgan asked: “Are you a cannibal?”

Rival GB News, which launched in June 2021 almost a year ahead of TalkTV, passed the one million subscriber mark on Youtube in October and now has 1.3 million.

Radio rival LBC has not yet hit the same milestone and is currently on 831,000 Youtube subscribers.

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The Daily Mail today launched a long-form video strategy around a slate of original series designed to be watched primarily via the Youtube app on home TVs.

The Mail’s new Global Video Studio is developing about 20 shows, including “Price of Fame”, which looks at how expensive it is to live the life of a celebrity, and “Your Body on Sport”, which looks in-depth at the physiological and medical issues facing professional athletes.

“The company is basically making a big investment in video”, Tony Manfred, the Mail’s global head of video, told Press Gazette. “This is a hit strategy. We expect these to be big, blockbuster, million-view-an-episode-type of things.

“Not all of them are going to work, but the hope is we’re sitting here next year and we have the beginnings of a slate of our shows that we know work.”

New York-based Manfred joined the Mail about nine months ago from Business Insider.

The Mail has a team of about 12 producers working on the series, led by Patrick Bulger also in New York, the relatively new head of shows at the title.

The Mail has about 50 people in total working in video. About 20 work on the “social” team (under head of social video Phil Harvey in London) creating vertical short-form video for platforms like Tiktok.

The remainder work on the “site” team (under head of site video Olivia Bateman, also in London) which creates video to accompany Mail Online’s text-based reporting, Manfred said.

New Youtube shows will be up to 30 minutes long (versus two minutes on Tiktok)

“The big Youtube trend that is happening in the last 18 months now is the amount of engagement they’re getting on televisions. I think Nielsen puts out a report every month of the biggest TV broadcasters in the US, and Youtube is number two behind only Disney,” Manfred said.

When all US viewing numbers are combined, for both TV and via on-screen apps, Youtube claims almost 10% of all US television use. Disney has 11.5%, according to Nielsen.

Most of the Mail’s audience on social and third-party platforms is now outside the UK.

“We’ve seen just completely explosive growth on Tiktok in the last 18 months,” Manfred said. The paper claims 13 million followers on TikTok. “We get more than a billion views a month there. So, part of the reason to pour gas on that fire is that it exposes our brand to people who might have never come in contact with a Daily Mail story otherwise.”

The Mail is part of Youtube’s partner sales program and is thus able to sell its own ad inventory on the app.

Each show will be 15 to 30 minutes long, instead of the 30 seconds to two minutes favoured by Tiktok. That allows the Mail to design the series with sponsors and brand partnerships in mind. A 22-minute-plus show has room for a presenting sponsor, pre-roll ads, and multiple midroll ad breaks, Manfred said.

The Mail claims it receives 125 million monthly views on Youtube. “The idea is that these unlock commercial opportunities that wouldn’t be available to us otherwise,” Manfred said.

Manfred is aiming to publish five to ten episodes of its new shows per week. That’s a much lower cadence than the Mail’s existing social media video output, which is producing ten to 20 short videos per day, he said.

That frantic pace is sustainable only because the Mail’s operations are larger than most newsrooms.

“The reason I came here [from Business Insider] is because they have all the resources, they have all the stuff you need to do video really well at scale,” Manfred said.

“They have a huge amount of money. They have the distribution megaphone on a bunch of different platforms. The going-from-zero-to-60 thing, that is really hard if you’re starting at a standing start. It’s not the case here. In my discussions with them there’s buy-in from the people in power here, the folks at the top were like ‘this is an opportunity for us and we trust you, and we like your plan, and go for it’. So that’s why I came over.”

“As growth in video consumption continues, we’ve adapted to give our global audiences access to the most captivating stories, and now advertisers have access to our premium video production capabilities,” Dominic Williams, Mail Metro Media’s chief revenue officer, said in a statement.

Read more:

• How Daily Mail went from voice of Middle England to Tiktok sensation
• At 1,500 stories per day, Mail Online is UK’s most prolific news website
• Daily Mail podcast chief Jamie East on publisher’s rapidly expanding audio empire.

The post Daily Mail launches ‘blockbuster’ video strategy aimed at home TV viewers appeared first on Press Gazette.

In recent years large social and video networks, offering powerful creator tools and free global distribution, have provided a platform for an increasingly wide range of voices and perspectives. Most of this content has nothing to do with news. Much of it generates very little attention, but some accounts and individuals have become increasingly influential around politics, and a range of other subjects  

In previous research we have shown how in newer networks such as TikTok and Instagram as well as in long standing video platforms like YouTube, mainstream media are significantly challenged by a range so called creators, influencers, and assorted personalities, as well as smaller, alternative news outlets. This contrasts with networks such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) where mainstream media and journalists still tend to lead the conversation when it comes to news.

Who are the biggest ‘news influencers’ in the UK, US and France?

In this year’s Digital News Report, we wanted to understand more about who these news influencers are, what type of ‘news’ they discuss, and what this means for wider society. 

We did this by asking a random selection of people who use a range of popular networks including Facebook, X, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok to name up to three mainstream and/or alternative accounts they followed most closely that related to news.

We then counted the most popular individuals and news brands from the combined data. We did this in around 20 countries around the world, but in this article, we explore findings in just three – the United Kingdom, the United States and France. 

United Kingdom: High representation of 'mainstream' journalists

Traditional UK news brands established an early and strong presence in social media networks such as Twitter (now X) and Facebook, but have been slower to adapt to newer networks.

Despite this, across all networks studied we find that the majority (57%) of all mentions were for mainstream news brands and their journalists and 43% for other individuals and alternative media.

Big broadcasters such as the BBC and Sky do best, along with The Guardian, but these brands are more challenged in YouTube and TikTok by a range of youth orientated outlets such as Politics Joe, LADbible, and TLDR News – and also by more partisan political outlets such as Novara Media and individual creators.

[Read more: Video brand TLDR finds way to make money providing news for the young]

When it comes to our list of top ten individual accounts, we also find a high representation of journalists from mainstream media brands.

Topping the list is LBC’s James O’Brien who has been particularly effective on YouTube and TikTok with smartly packaged video clips from his radio show regularly going viral. ITV’s political correspondent Robert Peston, an early adopter of social media, is in second place.

Also represented is former CNN, ITV, and TalkTV host Piers Morgan who recently took his eponymous Uncensored show online-only to get round what he calls the "unnecessary straitjacket" of TV schedules.

There is a clear absence of women in the most-mentioned list. Partisan perspectives are provided, on the left, by columnist and author Owen Jones and on the right by TV hosts from GB News. These include Nigel Farage, now leader of Reform UK, and Neil Oliver, whose controversial views on lockdowns and vaccinations have led to complaints to the broadcast regulator Ofcom. 

 
Comedian Russell Brand attracts an eclectic crowd for his outspoken, libertarian and anti-mainstream media views expressed manly via YouTube (and Rumble).

Sports journalists David Ornstein and Fabrizio Romano, both with a reputation for transfer scoops, are widely followed, as are others with specialist knowledge such as Dan Neidle, a former high-profile lawyer who breaks stories about dodgy tax affairs of the rich and famous. 

Influencer Dylan Page operates what he claims is the biggest English language news account on TikTok (10.6 million followers).

Celebrities, such as BBC football presenter and podcast entrepreneur Gary Lineker (nine million followers on X) tweet from time to time about politics and refugees and Elon Musk’s tweets (150 million followers) are also widely followed in the UK. 

United States: Much higher use of YouTube for news

We see a very different picture in the United States with much higher use of use of YouTube for news compared with the UK and a higher proportion of those users paying attention to alternative news sources.

X (formerly Twitter) is another important network for alternative voices in the US, where creators have been encouraged in recent years by owner Elon Musk. The network has recently refocused its strategy on video and is supporting commentators like Tucker Carlson, who was dismissed by Fox News, and has subsequently built a significant audience there.

Our list of the most mentioned individuals is headed by Carlson along with Joe Rogan who runs a successful daily show on YouTube (as well as Spotify).

It is striking that all of the most mentioned (top ten) individual names are known for political commentary or chat - rather than original newsgathering. Most of the content is partisan – with little or no attempt to put the other side, and the entire top ten list is made up of men.

Many of these names can hardly be called ‘alternative’, as they often come with decades of experience from legacy media, having previously been fixtures for years on traditional cable or talk radio networks.  

Some of these US individuals are attached to wider online networks, such as the Daily Wire and Blaze TV (conservative) and Young Turks and Medias Touch (progressive) that contain multiple creators within a wider brand. 

But whatever the politics, the look is remarkably consistent – somewhere between a podcast and a TV broadcast – with mostly male hosts armed with oversized microphones talking to mostly male guests.

Alternative voices received more citations in total from our US sample than traditional media, but mainstream media brands and their journalists still accounted for 42% of mentions with CNN and Fox News heading the list.  

On TikTok, however, alternative news approaches are also prominent, such as @underthedesknews, an account which features creator V Spehar presenting news updates from a lying down position to contrast with the formulaic ‘over the desk’ approach on mainstream TV. The account has over three million subscribers with content aimed at explaining current events and news for younger audiences. 

Elon Musk regularly posts content on subjects such as free speech, AI, and the failings of mainstream media. Donald Trump was also frequently mentioned and has 65 million followers on X and 6.5 million on Truth Social. 

France: Young news influencers lead the way

In France, we find mainstream media challenged on social and video platforms by a range of alternative media including a number of young news influencers.

Head and shoulders above others we find YouTuber and podcaster Hugo Travers, 27, known online as Hugo Décrypte, (literally Hugo Deciphers … the news). With 2.6 million subscribers on his main channel on YouTube and 5.7 million on TikTok, he has become a leading news source for young French people.  

In our survey data, Décrypte received more mentions than Le Monde, Le Figaro and Liberation combined. His followers had an average age of 27, around 20 years younger than many other news brands according to our data. Travers regularly interviews top politicians and global figures such as Bill Gates. The social media generation “won’t start reading a newspaper or watching the news on TV at 30,” he says.

Youth focused news brands such as Brut and Konbini have also built large audiences via social and video distribution. This level of engagement highlights the weakness of many traditional French news brands, which still primarily cater for older elites and have been slow to innovate through social platforms.

Protecting the environment has become an important theme for alternative voices with Hugo Clément (32) and Salomé Saqué (28) two prominent voices, who have built their ecological reputations through social media.

Meanwhile many older, male, right learning commentators, such as Pascal Praud and former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, are extending their influence through like-minded and mostly older communities on X and Facebook.

Far right politicians such as Marine Le Pen (one million followers on TikTok) and her 28 year old protégé  Jordan Bardella (1.6 million) were also mentioned in our data as the National Rally leader successfully targeted the youth vote ahead of the European elections. 

Implications for mainstream media from news influencer findings

Looking across our three selected countries we find that news related accounts of any kind are cited more often in the United States than they are in the UK or France.

In the United States we also find a greater number of alternative news or individual accounts mentioned as opposed to mainstream news brands and journalists, suggesting that the trend towards news influencers is far more developed here.

In the United Kingdom, by contrast mainstream media brands and journalists are both active and widely followed leaving less of a gap for independent operators. 

Digging further into the content itself, we find that many of the most cited accounts belong to partisan political commentators (from left and right), some of whom have been criticised for factual inaccuracies and for spreading conspiracies or misleading narratives, even as they are highly trusted by those who share their political views.

Many of the commentators now committed to online distribution emphasise their ability to speak freely (e.g. Tucker Carlson Unfiltered, Piers Morgan Uncensored), setting themselves up as an alternative to a mainstream media that they say ‘suppresses the truth’ or is driven by ‘elite and corporate interests’. But any increase in the range of views is not matched by diversity, with the most popular accounts mostly white and male in the three countries included here. 

A second important trend is the popularity of news creators and influencers that speak to younger audiences, mostly using video formats. In France Hugo Décrypte is blazing a trail in trying to make news more accessible and entertaining. Elsewhere brands such as Brut, Politics Joe, and TLDR News are engaging a large number of under 35s using younger hosts, as well as an agenda that includes more content about climate, social justice and mental health.

The vitality of alternative voices in social and video networks in some ways highlights perceived weaknesses of news organisations on such issues as trust, diversity, and digital storytelling – at least with some people. All this means that traditional media still has much to learn on how to better engage audiences in this increasingly complex and competitive space while staying true to its mission and values.

You can read more detail about news consumption across countries and about wider audience trends at www.digitalnewsreport.org/2024.

The post From James O’Brien to Joe Rogan: Rise of news influencers and alternative voices appeared first on Press Gazette.

Youtube-based publisher TLDR News is an unusual thing: a profitable news organisation targeted at under-35 year-olds.

Based out of London’s Southbank, ad-supported TLDR News employs 11 people full-time, is profitable on nearly £1m annual turnover and is staffed almost entirely by twenty-somethings.

Its success, albeit on a much smaller scale, contrasts with the high-profile struggles of Buzzfeed and Vice, as well as more recent efforts like The News Movement which has said it is yet to reach profitability.

The acronym tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) is used online to introduce a summary of a long and complex piece of content. To that end TLDR News specialises in explainer journalism: most of its content is eight to ten-minute long videos breaking down complex news stories.

Videos published to TLDR’s six channels this year have titles like: “Why is the UK so bad at building infrastructure?”, “Will South Ossetia join Russia?” and “How Nvidia became America’s third-most valuable company”.

That there is money to be made covering these sorts of weighty topics – not only outside of a paywall, but with young consumers as the audience – may come as a surprise to publishers used to talk of youth news avoidance and shortening attention spans.

Jack Kelly, the publisher’s 27 year-old founder and chief executive, acknowledges that TLDR News’ audience is not necessarily representative of the typical 18 to 35 year-old.

“But there’s definitely a whole bunch of people that do want a more approachable, more friendly, more authentic feeling, almost traditional news outlet,” he said.

Traditional is an apt word: in TLDR News videos, hosts sit behind a desk and deliver a well-planned, opinion-free, teleprompted monologue to camera. It is much closer to the style of BBC analysis editor Ros Atkins than Tiktok’s boisterous news aggregator Dylan Page (aka News Daddy).

“We definitely do appeal to the more young Economist, FT-reader type,” Kelly said. “They’ve maybe not made it to those outlets yet, [those are] maybe still too intimidating – but we’re leaning towards those very curious, quite analytical people, and I think there’s a definite market for that.”

Listen to Press Gazette’s interview with Kelly here:

How does TLDR News make money?

Youtube shares revenue from its programmatically-placed ads with content creators (55% in the case of TLDR), and this split accounts for around 40% of TLDR’s turnover. Another 40% comes from direct-bought sponsorships that see the channel’s hosts read out advertiser material in videos. Sponsorships are handled by TLDR’s agent, Nebula, which also runs the education-themed subscription streaming service of the same name.

The remaining 20% of revenue comes from sources such as payments for panel talk appearances, and in 2023 TLDR News made a £50,000 profit selling a one-off, £9.99 print newspaper titled Too Long.

“We’ve conquered new media, so we jokingly said we’re going back and we’re getting old media too,” Kelly said.

In all, revenue comes in at between £750,000 and £1m a year according to Kelly, and the outlet makes a profit “on almost every video we make”.

“I think why it works is just because there is such a variety of audience,” he said. “I think there is wisdom to the idea that younger generations expect different things from their news, and do want different things. But equally, to pretend that an entire ten-year generation all want the same thing from their news is clearly inaccurate.”

‘If you’re just putting a firehose of content out there, the audience has to be more selective‘

Numerous established publishers are on Youtube: in both of Press Gazette’s annual rankings of the top publishers on the platform to date, Vox has stood out for the greater than two million views its videos get on average, and broadcasters CNN, the BBC and Fox News boast more than ten million subscribers each.

TLDR News did not appear on either ranking because, with 733,000 subscribers on its main channel at time of writing, it did not meet the one million subscriber threshold required for inclusion. But if it had, it would have ranked above Fox and CNN – as well as publishing giants like The New York Times, Sky News and the Daily Mail – for average views per video.

[Read more: Daily Mail expands Youtube presence with Andrew Pierce and Sarah Vine show]

Asked what tips TLDR News could give to established publishers trying to boost their presence on Youtube, Kelly said “a lot of news publishers don’t treat the platform as a creator would”.

“You’re looking at some of these publications that are posting hundreds of videos a day on the same channel… They’ll have some really good videos, no doubt. But there’s also thousands of videos that are getting basically no views.”

Kelly said this broadcast-style approach to Youtube misunderstands the platform.

“The platform works best when you’re building a curated selection of videos and building a connection with an audience.”

Across its six channels TLDR News posts three or so videos a day, or roughly four videos per channel per week.

Kelly said TLDR’s audience knows “that even if the topic maybe isn’t the exact thing they’re most interested in, they trust there’s something interesting there, because we built that connection. If you’re just putting a firehose of content out there, the audience has to be more selective”.

Amid the chaotic news agenda, he said that audiences on Youtube are “looking for filters”.

“They’re looking for people in their lives who can highlight what matters. And I think news organisations have the potential to be that to some extent.”

But he added: “It’s not even about just the quantity that they’re publishing, it’s also about the tone.

“It’s really easy and useful, if you’re a TV news channel, to just clip bits of your show and put them on Youtube. Super easy – you’ve already paid for it, it already exists. The problem is: is that really what your audience on Youtube wants?”

He said that no matter how well scripted the segment, “if it’s a clip from the ten o’clock news, if it’s a clip of someone stood outside a building [looking] very formal in a suit, that just never really has the vibe of Youtube.”

Day to day, Kelly said, audiences “kind of want a trusted friend. They want someone out there that is a connection, that feels like a peer almost, that can select the news that matters to them and present it in a way that makes sense”.

Citing the FT Strategies Next Gen News report, to which he contributed, Kelly said one way for publishers to approach this was by using multiple sub-brands – like TLDR’s multiple channels – or by using individual journalists as a more relatable, human face of the news organisation.

He cited The Wall Street Journal’s Shelby Holliday and Vox’s former Youtube essayist Johnny Harris as successful examples of the latter.

Although TLDR News’ videos are straight and opinion-free, its journalist engage with the audience both through social media and to some extent through the videos themselves: if a video gets a high enough proportion of thumbs-down reacts on Youtube, the outlet will put up another video discussing the audience’s responses and what it may have gotten wrong in the first report.

[Read more: FT Strategies report: How and why news publishers should engage with Gen Z now]

‘If you’re doing a breaking news story, seven days until it gets picked up by the algorithm is just way too long’

TLDR’s approach to Youtube is not the only one that works, Kelly said. Although the platform has been pushing creators toward short-form content recently, he said “there is a lot of data suggesting that the audience is diverging – it’s not just moving towards short form.

“There’s also been a massive uptick lately in really long form videos – you’re talking over an hour – and also specifically in living room viewing on Youtube. There’s been a massive uptick in the number of people who are sitting down and watching more documentary-style, TV-style videos.”

He said some other creators with Nebula “are making two, three hour-long videos and seeing the retention very strong throughout”.

Adapting to short-form content poses its own challenges for TLDR News.

“If you’re a big entertainment [or] comedy creator, just clip the funny moments, the best jokes, the explosions, and that’s a Short” – Shorts being Youtube’s vertical video competitor product to Tiktok and Instagram Reels.

“But for us, it kind of doesn’t work. The most interesting part of one of our videos is nearly always near the end… But the problem is that you need all the context, so if we clip out the really interesting bit, you’ve got something kind of meaningless.”

So instead the publisher puts out themed series of evergreen content for Shorts, in which its hosts talk quickly walk through, for example, European separatist movements. The Shorts feed accounted for 30% of the users who discovered TLDR in the 28 days prior to speaking with Press Gazette, Kelly said, compared with 42% who clicked through from videos suggested on Youtube’s homepage.

“Because we’re batching it and because we’re doing it in themes, we can produce a series in one go, and then drop it day-by-day on a channel. So we found that that kind of more evergreen content performs better [on Shorts] – the things that aren’t super contemporary and super newsworthy.”

Breaking news was not well-suited to the Shorts content recommendation algorithm, he added, noting that after publishing a video, “you will get a big spike in viewership right at the beginning from your existing subscribers, people who’ve got the notifications turned on. They’ll watch it in the first day or so.

“Then it will flatten out for the next seven days, And then the algorithm will pick it up again about a week later. And that’s when either it takes off or bumps a bit and then plateaus again. And the problem with that, obviously, is if you’re doing a breaking news story, seven days [until] it gets picked up by the algorithm is just way too long.”

But Kelly said TLDR News is “quite confident in Youtube as a platform”, saying it was more akin to a streaming platform than a social media network like Facebook or X/Twitter.

“And we kind of think, to some extent, that if Youtube were to fall over overnight, that would be such a catastrophic issue for us anyway that we probably, even if we had diversified, would be kind of screwed regardless.”

The post Video brand TLDR finds way to make money providing news for the young appeared first on Press Gazette.

TalkTV’s star presenter Piers Morgan is ending his nightly show on the channel but continuing to produce less regular content on Youtube as part of a major strategic shift for the channel.

Morgan joined News UK on a three-year deal in April 2022 which Press Gazette understands was worth £50m.

It included Morgan’s nightly hour-long TV show Uncensored, which also aired in the US and Australia, a weekly column in The Sun, documentaries and a book deal.

The show was initially broadcast out of a purpose-built studio in West London but since December 2022 it has been filmed at News UK’s London Bridge HQ as a cost-cutting move.

Morgan said: “It’s clear there’s a huge global demand for the content we’re making, but the commitment to a daily show at a fixed schedule, with all the editing and time sensitivities that involves, has been an increasingly unnecessary straitjacket.

“People are watching the content on Youtube rather than conventional television and I have no problem with that. You can’t defy audiences or tell them how they should be consuming.

“I could happily interview Elon Musk for three or four hours tomorrow and the audience would lap it up. But the nightly restriction of having to go into a studio at 8pm when sometimes there is nothing happening and literally fill time? Nobody wants that. The question becomes, why do it?”

Exciting news – Piers Morgan Uncensored is about to get even bigger!@piersmorgan | #PMU pic.twitter.com/pp9ACr5Vn5

— Piers Morgan Uncensored (@PiersUncensored) February 8, 2024

Last night was the final episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored on TalkTV. Mike Graham is taking Morgan’s slot from Monday.

Executive vice president of broadcasting for News UK Scott Taunton told The Times (a fellow News UK title) this was part of a wider shift away from linear TV.

He said: “More and more, audiences are consuming video news and opinion online through their phones and this evolution is set to continue. It’s also where the advertising revenues are. Creating professional quality, TV-like video that does well digitally — via streaming services and social media — will be the focus of future investment for all our brands, including Talk.”

Rival publisher Mail Online has been ramping up its presence on Youtube in recent months with the launch of a weekly talk show hosted by Andrew Pierce and Sarah Vine.

The publisher has 3.2 million subscribers on Youtube and regularly gets more than 500,000 views for its weekly show Palace Confidential.

While TV viewing figures for TalkTV have been lower than its rivals on Freeview, Morgan has 2.3 million subscribers for his show on Youtube.

His biggest interviews have received millions of views on the platform. The livestream of his nightly show tends to attract around 50,000 views.

Meanwhile, TalkTV’s main Youtube channel has 768,000 subscribers.

According to an estimate by TV ratings body BARB, TalkTV had a monthly reach of 2.3 million in December. This compares to 4 million for GB News, 8.9 million for Sky News and 11 million for BBC News.

TalkTV had a total identified monthly share (including streaming services) of 0.08%, followed by GB News on 0.35%, Sky News on 0.49% and BBC News on 0.68%.

The shift towards online video by publishers is a result of declining website advertising revenue and rapid growth in advertising revenues on social media and video.

Google reported ad revenue on its Youtube platform up 16% year on year in the fourth quarter to $9.2bn.

Youtube is believed to retain 45% of revenue from ads sold on its platform with 55% kept by video creators.

The post Piers Morgan moves to Youtube in major strategy shift for TalkTV appeared first on Press Gazette.

Supporter-funded Novara Media is closing in on 15,000 monthly donors, its new North of England editor has said.

Craig Gent told Press Gazette on Monday that despite the cost of living crisis, 2023 was “the strongest year that we’ve had in terms of supporter funding”.

Press Gazette last spoke to Gent when he was head of operations in July 2022, shortly after the left-wing news and opinion non-profit hit 10,000 paying supporters.

Following a fundraising drive at the end of last year, Gent says Impress-regulated Novara is now a few hundred people away from the 15,000 milestone. Readers are invited to make a monthly donation ranging from £3 per month upwards.

And while some paywalled publishers have faced headwinds in the cost of living crisis, Gent said Novara has seen average monthly donation sizes increase.

As a result, Gent said the publication has fulfilled the ambitions he outlined to Press Gazette in 2022: it has hired a dedicated operations manager, a labour movement correspondent and a social media editor and it has brought its live Youtube show up to five days a week and added new email newsletters.

The staff headcount is now 25, one person more than in July 2022. All staff are paid £19 per hour regardless of role (due to increase in spring), and full-time staff work 32 hours per week, which adds up to a pre-tax salary of just over £31,600. This equates to wages costs (including employers’ NI) of around £800,000 per year.

[Read more: Novara Media hits 10,000 monthly donors with ‘sky the limit’]

Making a donation model work with a social media ‘ecology’

Thursday 1 February will mark five years since Novara incorporated, having previously been a purely voluntary outfit. Its traffic today sits at approximately 500,000 monthly visits, according to Similarweb, compared with 300,000 for The Canary, another publisher that was previously a staple of left-wing media during Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership.

Social media has been a particular area of growth for Novara Media recently, Gent said, with Youtube watch time doubling in 2023 and its subscriber count up 300% to 666,000. Its Instagram following tripled over the year, he added.

With Facebook referral traffic plunging for publishers and Google potentially poised to remake search with generative AI, many publishers have recently become more cautious with the tech platforms, prioritising direct distribution channels like newsletters and home pages.

But Gent said the creation of a broad Novara Media “ecology” across social media had served it well.

“What we do see when we survey our supporters when they join is that people who are joining do have quite a wide understanding of the Novara offering.

“So they will follow the Youtube, but they’re also engaging with our social-first stuff on Instagram, they’re also engaging with the articles on the website and with the podcasts.”

Youtube was “special” for driving paying supporters, Gent said, “in that you can speak with a voice directly to the audience when we’re doing Novara Live [formerly Tysky Sour] five nights a week. Michael [Walker, the host] can speak to the audience directly and say: ‘Look, this is possible because of your donations.’ And it continues to be small donations that drive us…

“We’re really focused on building a relationship. I think, by the time people become supporters, they really feel not just that we’re a reliable source of news, but they have an affinity for what we’re trying to do overall.”

Novara North

Gent was raised in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, and is today based in Leeds, where he works alongside Novara’s merchandiser Thomas Clements. In an article announcing his appointment, Gent said his remit would be to “make visible the connections between the organisation of life, work and politics across the north of England, and to find stories and connect them to important questions for the left”.

He told Press Gazette that from outside London, “it was completely obvious to me that Labour were going to crash” in the 2019 election – a defeat often attributed in part to the defection from Labour of Leave-voting, so-called “red wall” constituencies in the North.

“Although obviously London is the biggest city, and it’s incredibly important to study and understand, it’s not necessarily the best lens onto the big picture in British politics,” Gent said.

In part his new job will see him working with Novara Media’s Scottish writers “to ensure that our coverage there is more than commentary on the SNP and Labour”.

Gent said he was interested in stories like the Teesside Freeport, why so many ex-miners who would have previously fought the Thatcher government now support Nigel Farage-backed Reform Party and, closer to home for Gent, “why the water in East Leeds tastes and smells like bleach”.

Novara Media, coming soon to a town near you

Looking ahead, Novara hopes to revive its events operation, which has been largely dormant since the first lockdown.

Gent said the publisher easily sold out a 600-capacity talk with former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis set to take place next month, and saw success with a Christmas party and an end of year discussion late in 2023.

“I think there’s a real appetite, basically, for people to meet up and be in a space. So the Yanis event will be a talk, but it will also have a kind of afterparty as well for people to socialise. And it’s long been our ambition that we can have regular events – and also events around the country.”

They may have a chance to run those events outside London when the next general election, expected this year, is eventually called.

But as far as longer-term goals, Novara Media has still failed to establish the bar that its co-founder Aaron Bastani said he wanted in 2017.

“We still want that bar,” Gent said. “I think I said before that we need to get the right cocktail. I’m working on a twist on the Dark and Stormy – I’m going to call it the Grey and Windy. It’d be the North of England cocktail. I just need to make sure I get the quantity of Henderson’s Relish right.”

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