More bad news for the Beeb. It seems that the Corporation’s flagship Sunday politics show has sprung a leak and is losing its audience at an alarming rate. Figures from Barb, obtained by the Sunday Times, show that the number of live viewers for Laura Kuenssberg’s show has declined by more than a third since she replaced Andrew Marr a year ago.
Marr pulled in an average of 1.9 million viewers each episode during his 16 years at the show. For the final months of 2022, Kuenssberg was getting audiences of 1.5 million but that has now dropped this year to 1.2 million every week. The BBC claims that Kuenssberg’s average is actually more like 1.5 million each week, when figures including those who watch on iPlayer or other devices are used.
But noses at W1A will no doubt be put out of joint by suggestions that Kuenssberg lacks the ‘warmth’ of Marr or his predecessor David Frost.
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