The Daily Telegraph and Radio 1 Newsbeat

As part of my latest presentation, I looked at the News Agenda of The Daily Telegraph and Radio 1.

The Daily Telegraph was founded in June 1855 by Colonel Arthur B. Sleigh, an army officer and travel writer. It was originally published to air Sleigh’s complaints about the Duke of Cambridge and to expose what Sleigh saw as the truth of the Crimean War. The paper was not a success however and as a result Sleigh was forced to sell it to his publisher Joseph Levy.  Levy was experienced in this field as he was involved with other newspapers around at this time and he decided to launch the Telegraph as a cheaper alternative to those already on the market. His sons who succeeded him later coined the slogan ‘the largest, best, and cheapest newspaper in the world’.

Nowadays, however, the Telegraph is owned by identical twin brothers, Sirs David and Frederick Barclay, who made their £1.8billion fortune in a variety of businesses including hotels, casinos and department shops. They purchased the Telegraph and its sister companies in 2004 from a Canadian business for around £665m. Their time in charge has been somewhat ruthless and eventful with one hundred journalists made redundant in 2006 and a further seven editorial changes to the Sunday and Daily Telegraph since their ownership began.

The Daily Telegraph is traditionally considered to have a right-of-centre political alignment and as a result has conventionally been considered pro-Conservative Party. Its affiliation with Tory leaders actually led to Private Eye magazine dubbing it ‘The Torygraph’. There is some suggestion however, that under the Barclay brothers the Telegraph is eager to move away from being associated as 100% Tory. In a recent interview David Barclay stated that the Telegraph would not be ‘the house paper of the Conservatives’ adding that ‘where the government are right, we shall support them’. Despite this I believe the Daily Telegraph to still be a centre-right newspaper. I have found numerous references to this relationship in my recent reading, from subtle quotes such as ‘targets concerning waiting times and cancelled operation, introduced by Labour, result in managers pushing Doctors’, showing a desire to emphasize blame on the previous Labour government. There was also some more obvious pro-Conservative content featured, such as the headline ‘Mrs. Thatcher was right’. I think that Barclay’s statement regarding The Telegraph’s political persuasion was a somewhat pragmatic comment on his behalf. He may well have wanted to avoid the paper being completely associated with the current government as if they were to prove unpopular, the newspapers sales would be likely to dip.

The Daily Telegraph itself usually has something of a busy front page layout. The ‘Win Free Sex’ box at the top of the paper is not as crudely obvious as many of the tabloids often are, but it is often brightly coloured, advertising promotional give-a-ways or articles from feature writers.   
The main headlines of the day of course feature on the front, and are usually politically based, rather than entertainment news for example. There are usually three or four main stories on the front page, each with a reasonably large section of reporting and this is again in contrast with the one story front page approach favoured by the tabloid and mid-market papers.

Along the right hand side of the second page runs a news in brief column which features short bulletins of both serious and light-hearted stories. 

The Daily Telegraph features a World News section towards the back middle pages of the paper. I was surprised at how far back many of these world affair stories were published as they were often important reports including violence in the Middle East and the G20 summit. Even further towards the back is the Comments and Features section, where feature writers and special guests write much more in depth pieces. There is also a significantly sized letters to the editor area in this section.

The Daily Telegraph describes its target audience in its online rate card as being affluent, loyal, influential and elusive. This claim of loyalty appears to be justified as 81% of their readers look at no other daily quality. 

The Telegraph has the oldest average readership of any national paper and on average it takes fifty-six minutes to read. This suggests to me that The Telegraph is mainly targeted at someone with more time to spare reading the news, and its high age of readers suggests many of them will be retired. The Telegraph can therefore afford to feature longer articles and features as it understands that many of its readers can afford the time to view them.

In terms of social groups 59% of the Daily Telegraph’s readers are AB1. This means that they are upper and middle class with a further 28% lower middle Class. This would imply that the vast majority of Telegraph readers are wealthy and well educated. As a result of this the Telegraph can use different language and more complex sentences than a tabloid paper. The Plymouth University’s guide to working out a reading age shows that the Telegraph use an average reading age of a nineteen year old whilst The Sun’s is that of a twelve year old.

The Daily Telegraph also has a 56% male majority of readers.  One example that I regularly found which may show their awareness of this was that more often than not the front page featured a photograph of an attractive woman.  These women tended to be more culturally high-brow than say Cheryl Cole for example (and usually in less sexually suggestive poses), but including these images may be a deliberate acknowledgement of their male majority audience.

The adverts featured in the newspaper also tell us much about their audience. I found that the brands of car and watch that are often advertised were usually at the reasonably high-end of the market, with Audi in particular embarking on an almost daily campaign. Similarly the supermarkets that advertised in the Daily Telegraph were Waitrose, Marks & Spencer’s, Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s, highlighting the Telegraph’s predominately middle-class audience, as cheaper brands such as Aldi or Lidl did not.

The Daily Telegraph is the bestselling quality daily with an average circulation of 678,252 between April and September 2010, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation. This is estimated to mean they have around 1.8m readers (National Readership Survey). This circulation is 35% more than the nearest daily rival The Times and amounts to 43% of the quality market. Despite this, in keeping with the general decline of newspapers, sales for The Telegraph are down by around 2.5% in the last year and nearly double that in the last five years.

With other former broadsheet newspapers such as The Times deciding to change their broadsheet format to something smaller, it is interesting that The Daily Telegraph did not. One possible reason for this could be to ensure that it still stands out. Given that all the other daily qualities now use a smaller format I believe that this is certainly a valid point. I also think that given the older nature of their main readers, many will be retired and therefore can spare the time and space to unfurl the paper over their table. Also given the great emphasis on loyalty that the Telegraph places on its audience, they may have been reluctant to change this particular area, despite making technological innovation with other aspects.

The Telegraph launched its online version in 1994, becoming the first daily web-based newspaper in Europe to do so. www.telegraph.co.uk is now in the top 3 most popular UK newspaper websites, receiving an average of 1,669,773 unique browsers a day, each spending roughly thirteen minutes on the site. Though The Telegraph had fallen somewhat behind online in recent years, its exposure of the MP’s Expenses Scandal has seen it climb back up in the last eighteen months.

I will now look to compare The Daily Telegraph with Radio 1’s own news coverage.

BBC Radio 1 was launched in 1967 in an attempt to modernize the BBC’s radio coverage. Its use of jingles was also a BBC first and was an attempt to attract the young listeners who previously had often listened to ‘pirate’ radio stations such as Radio Caroline, that had recently been outlawed.

Radio 1 has a public service broadcasting obligation to provide news, under Ofcom regulations, as it is an organisation intended for public benefit rather than purely commercial reasons. The result of these restrictions is Newsbeat, Radio 1’s flagship news programme.  It began in 1973 and was a response to the less traditional news bulletins that were popular on commercial radio stations at this time, making it very different from the formal, old-fashioned style of BBC Radio’s news reporting.

Nowadays Newsbeat is broadcast at 12.45 and 17.45 during the week, lasting for around 15minutes, with shorter bulletins played throughout the day every thirty minutes. This is structurally the complete opposite to The Telegraph, which has a lengthy average reading time and as a result reports each story in much more depth.  

Newsbeat tends to open by outlining the stories it intends to discuss, with brief snippets of upcoming reports and interviews. The various regulations imposed ensure that it too must provide important political stories; however it often features basic question and answer style information to explain more complex reports. In addition to this nearly every report tends to feature interviews with the general public asking for their opinions. This is a clear contrast to The Telegraph, where the readers own thoughts are located near the back, taking up just half a page.

Most Newsbeat episodes feature entertainment news, usually with at least one celebrity interview. In addition to this there is usually one story featuring education based events as a result of their target audience. Recently for example, stories about the rise in tuition fees have featured and are very pro-student biased. In contrast to this The Telegraph was very critical of lecturers who took part in and praised the recent protests.

The tone of Newsbeat is very informal. The language used is a clear representation of this. One person interviewed used the word ‘crappy’ in the broadcast and this is something that I would not expect to find on any of the other BBC news programmes. Presenters and reporters talk to each other colloquially as well with one example being where the main presenter linked to the next reporting by saying ‘Alright Dave’. This is yet another contrast to The Daily Telegraph as we have already seen that they have the highest readership age of the national newspapers.

There is music played throughout Newsbeat, rather than just at the beginning or end of the broadcast. This emphasises that Radio 1 is a predominately music based channel and could also be used to keep their target audience interested during the news break.

These examples of tone and content clearly show that they are aiming at younger listeners and indeed their target audience age is between fifteen and twenty-four. The BBC’s own Radio 1 audience rate card emphasizes this adding that the young do not often associate the BBC with things that are relevant to them. They perceive the BBC as generally ‘old fashioned’, ‘introspective’, ‘slow’ and ‘corporate’. This suggests that Radio 1 takes very deliberate attempts to appear ‘cool’ and appeal to a younger audience.

The dominant social group of Radio 1 listeners are C1, with C2 close behind. These are the lower branches of middle class mainly made up of white collar workers and skilled manual workers. The entertainment content of the news broadcast perhaps best represents the difference between Radio 1’s target class and The Telegraphs as Newsbeat for example discusses movies, rather than the opera or the theatre, which are often reviewed in The Telegraph.

Radio 1 receives an average of 11.81m listeners per week according to Rajar’s last quarterly figures. This is just over 9% of total radio listeners and makes it the BBC’s second most popular radio station. I would assume that Newsbeat’s figures are similar to that of Radio 1 as a whole, as the feature is so short that I would doubt many listeners would turn over during the broadcast.

One area where The Daily Telegraph and Radio 1 could be seen to show similarities is in their online content.  Newsbeat Online generally features similar stories to that of the radio however, I found that there was much more entertainment news and lighter hearted stories online, perhaps as it is less restricted in the content it is obliged to provide. A great deal of focus is placed on interaction, with listeners given plenty of chances to have their say, and to use Newsbeat on every modern day social network or application.  This is a clear attempt from the BBC to provide news in the format that they believe young people want, they summarise this in their target audience briefing, by stating that most young people  are ‘technologically literate’.
The Daily Telegraph online also features opportunities for ‘citizen journalism’ and interaction, as well as providing many modern day services such as Podcasts and applications.
To conclude both Newsbeat and The Daily Telegraph appear to understand the current requirement to provide news online. Both have been the innovators in their respective fields and this shows a clear understanding that modern day users need much more interaction and online availability of their news.  This could perhaps be an admission by each side that these two separate forms of old media are dying out and in order to survive, online content is a must.