NewsLine Column: Have We Become A Sound Bite Nation?

The recent war in Iraq revealed the growing demand for instant news, with people turning to the internet and rolling news channels for short bursts of the latest information. However, as the terrestrial TV schedules return to normal, Media Planning Group’s Denise Turner asks whether the rise of reality TV is responsible for making us a nation obsessed with sound bites…

On Sunday night BBC2 aired the first instalment of its new documentary on Iraq – Fighting the War. This is a combination of extensive footage shot during the main part of the war itself, as well as interviews with major players in the Government and the armed forces back home.

It is perhaps early days but the unofficial overnight figures reveal that the show attracted 1.8 million viewers, which equated to a 9% audience share. This is less than half the audience achieved by Big Brother in the same period. Despite what people have said, reality TV does seem to be continuing to draw in the viewers.

So does this mean that we are not interested in serious programming any more? Or is it just that we have been saturated with war coverage? Traditionally, world events, especially wars, do have a significant positive impact on media consumption. Newspapers in particular have seen large rises in circulation as the appetite for the latest news and updates increases. At the time of the 1991 Gulf war satellite channels were still in their infancy, but it effectively introduced round-the-clock television as a means of satisfying the appetite even further.

However, with the Iraq war of 2003 there was a shift in the fortunes of the media. For probably the first time newspapers didn’t do as well as in the past. Websites though did very well indeed – Guardian Unlimited broke the 100 million page impressions barrier with 107 million in March. On the day the war started – 20 March – it saw page impressions hit a total in excess of 5 million. This compares with a total of 44.5 million impressions in September 2001 – the month of the World Trade Center disaster. Television also achieved ratings increases as people tuned in to catch the latest news.

So why was this the case? A lot of the developments in the Iraq war were happening in the late evening, which meant that newspapers had already gone to print and so found it difficult to be up to date. So people turned to more immediate forms of media to find things out. But anecdotally it seems that people didn’t really stay tuned for very long, perhaps not wanting to view graphic images of fighting and badly-injured children. Despite having access to constant updates it appears that people just wanted a quick fix of news.

Does this mean that the surge of reality TV over the last few years has trained us to have shorter attention spans? Have we become conditioned to the format of regular daily updates summarising 24 hours in just 30 minutes? Have we become a soundbite nation?

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