American news consumption takes a hit | WARC | The Feed

American news consumption takes a hit

Last January’s siege of the Capitol drove a spike around the world in consumer engagement with news content, but since then, Americans, at least, have shown much less interest, Axios reports.

What the figures show

• Unique visits to the top five news sites fell 8% (Source: Similarweb) in 2021 compared to 2020.
• News media app downloads for the top 12 mainstream publishers have fallen 33% (Source: Apptopia).
• Primetime news viewership among the major cable networks was down 36% (Source: Nielsen).
• Social media interactions with news articles plummeted 65% (Source: NewsWhip).

What they mean

With no Trump dominating the headlines and people wearying of the ongoing pandemic, news organizations haven’t been able to capture attention in the same way as in the previous couple of years. Hard news has largely been supplanted by sport, which may augur well for next month’s Winter Olympics in Beijing. But politics will likely make a comeback in the run-up to the midterm elections in November.

Sourced from Axios