I have been meaning to post for a while on the impact of Freeview on Sky News viewing.

Freeview launched in November 2002, offering a set-top box for viewers who didn’t want Sky.

The argument was that these viewers had an innate antipathy to Sky, hence they were more likely to pick the BBC as their news channel of choice. Here is Kevin Bakhurst, controller of the BBC News Channel, writing in October 2007:

Since Freeview became available, the audience for BBC News 24 has shot up. News 24 now reaches about seven million people a week, and has substantially overtaken Sky News. The growth of News 24 isn’t purely at the expense of Sky: it seems the channel has been attracting new viewers to 24 hour news as well as taking Sky’s, since Sky’s reach has been fairly stable at around four million over the past few years.

So let’s take a look at year on year performance since 2002 for the month of April.

The 2003 spike is the fall of Baghdad, when Sky hit a 3% share. That spike is also the high watermark of Sky’s performance.

From 2004-6 its share drops from 0.7% to 0.5% whilst the BBC pegs level at 0.5%.

The event in the middle of that was the Sky News relaunch of at the end of October 2005. The reason for the relaunch was a move to new studios, but although it was critically panned it didn’t really seem to hit in November, when Sky got a 0.6% share.

By early 2006 the Beeb had started clocking up regular 0.6% shares. The timing looks great for the appointment of Kevin Bakhurst, who was appointed to his current job in December 2005, right at the beginning of the upturn.

By April 2006 the channels are level pegging. In May 2006, John Ryley steps up to replace Nick Pollard at Sky News.

But the underlying trend in share has already moved to the BBC. There follows the swift ascent of BBC News, jumping to 0.7% in 2007, and a remarkable 0.9% in April 2008.

It’s Sky’s turn to stay still.

What’s the explanation?

I’ve argued before that cross-promotion from BBC News programming on BBC One boosts their News Channel viewing, but the last two years have seen a near doubling of share for BBC News Channel. I don’t tend to buy “better mousetrap” explanations for such growth.

Freeview has gone from zero to 14m set-top boxes since 2002. Sky subscribers have gone from just over 6m to just over 8m. But does that explain the switch since 2006?

What about Bakhurst’s claim that BBC News Channel is adding new viewers? Combined channel share in April 2002 was 1.4%. In April 2008 it was 1.3%.

Maybe we haven’t come such a long way…