Broadcast news executives are wrestling with the problem of how to get digital-focused younger viewers to watch their output.

Three-quarters of adults say they get their news from TV and they watch an average of 115 hours of coverage a year each. However, when it comes to younger viewers the data is far less comforting: 16- to 24-year-olds are watching just 27 hours a year, according to Ofcom reasearch.

Young people are increasingly consuming TV content in short bursts via YouTube and social media.

“We’ve seen similar evidence that this young generation do have a much more eclectic wide ranging way of getting news,” said Mary Hockaday, the BBC’s head of newsroom, speaking in a panel session at the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival on Friday.

‘Vice News isn’t TV news’

One place TV executives are looking for inspiration about how to reach this generation is New York-based Vice Media, the global digital youth brand with an audience of 130 million a month. However, the interest in Vice Media’s ability to attract younger viewers is mixed with more than a few misgivings about its content.

Vice broadened its focus from youth-oriented arts and culture into wider current affairs and foreign news coverage with the launch of Vice News five months ago, including video reports from conflict areas such as Ukraine and in the Middle East.

Vice News has become one of the fastest-growing channels on YouTube.

“We have had 100m views since we started,” Kevin Sutcliffe, the head of news programmes, Europe, for Vice Media, said in the same Edinburgh session.

“Our approach and the way we are trying to package what we do is radically different to what we see in terrestrial TV.

“Vice News isn’t TV news. We are building it out of an already engaged online audience in their 20s. We are in a different space. Response to people moving away from the old fashioned forms of TV news, whether that’s news bulletins or 24-hour [rolling news] TV. We have responded to that.”

Ageing presenters

Sutcliffe, the former editor of Channel 4’s Dispatches, said that one issue is that broadcasters’ mostly ageing lineup of presenters does not resonate with youth audiences.

“There is an issue,” he said. “Someone who is 23 or 24 years old wants to see someone their own age looking at the world with them, for them, interpreting it, not seeing someone in a studio talking on a live feed to some one down the line who is making it safe or managed for them.

“What is the connection with a presenter in the studios in their 40s and 50s? The whole process of TV news is not necessarily speaking to that audience.”

Hockaday disagreed with such views, pointing out that veteran BBC news presenter John Simpson had considerable success in a session on social media site Reddit.

“It is really important to have talent of all ages,” she said. “Young people won’t only take their news from young people. Heaven forbid, we got John Simpson to do a Reddit question and answer session and a lot of them were young people. It is too narrow to say young people will only be engaged by young people.”

Trusted brands

For Geoff Hill, editor of ITV News, there is a problem with trust and responsibility with new entrants such as Vice Media.

“We are a different news service,” he said. “You don’t really want a kid saying ‘It’s kicking off here, it’s fucking dangerous’ to tell you what is going on. You look to the trusted brands, credible reporters.”

He cited a recent popular Vice Media report, The Islamic State, which featured graphic images of severed heads and did not run with a warning message.

Hockaday said that the BBC would not have used the video report in the way Vice did, although she admitted the access the reporter got was impressive.

“It is all about the way you use this stuff,” she added. “It is part of what we are all trying to do. There is no way we would have used it in that form. I would definitely wanted more context and more challenge in the piece.”

‘Trust is not an issue’

Sutcliffe stood by the decision not to run a warning on the video, which has racked up more than 7m views, and said it is as trustworthy as any other news source.

“[Our reports] are largely unvarnished or unmediated, as much as they can be,” he said. “We have millions of people watching this stuff, no issue has been raised in the five months since launch about trust. It is news to me that there is a trust issue for Vice News. Is not an issue. Is not there. People are coming back.”

He said Vice Media is breaking the mould of the historical rigidity of the TV news format, broadcasting a bulletin made up of short edited video packages and some live reports at fixed times of the day and out of step with a youth audience that lives in an on-demand world.

“We are trying to show a wider journalistic picture, there are different pressures on TV news shows,” he said. “We are not trying to put things into 2 or 3 minutes. If we’ve got 6 minutes it runs for 6 minutes. If it is 36 minutes it runs for 36 minutes. We’ve found we’ve got engagements of 20 to 25 minutes for foreign documentaries. That is why Vice has come in, there is growth there.”

‘Young people are interested in foreign news’

Dorothy Byrne, the head of news and current affairs for Channel 4, said that big broadcasters are not so far behind in the digital race.

“This dividing up between Huw Edwards standing in a room and Vice – honestly, that just not realistic,” Byrne added. “Actually there are many similarities between our journalism at Channel 4 and Vice’s journalism. [Look at documentary strand] Unreported World, young people are interested in foreign news.”

She pointed out that figures for Unreported World are at a five year high and the share of 16- to 34-year-olds watching it has risen by 20%.

“The interesting thing is to look at what people like about it,” she said. “They definitely like it long form. We’ve got to take it out to them. We can’t expect them to necessarily come and watch it at 8pm at night. We are going out where the young people are as well as encouraging them on television.”

Hill said he believed that as the digital generation gets older there is likely to be a transition to the style and subject matter covered in traditional TV news programmes.

“What is really important about growing up is when you get to 30 or 40 years old you have a stake in society,” he said. “We aren’t talking [at this panel] about interest rates, pensions, the NHS, elderly care. These are things that don’t mean a lot to you when you are 18 years old but mean everything to you when you grow up.”

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