Young people switch off television news in increasing numbers

Millions of young people have switched off television news bulletins, and turned instead to online sources, according to a survey of the news industry in several major markets.

The shift raises questions about the business models of broadcasters such as CNN, MSNBC and Sky News, and underlines the growing importance of Facebook and others as the gateways to content. “Not only do young people prefer online, our data show that a significant proportion are abandoning television news completely,” concluded the report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. The US saw one of the biggest shifts: the proportion of under-35s who said they watched a TV news bulletin in the past week dropped from 37 percent in 2013 to 24 percent in 2015.