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BBC claims 21.1m viewers for spending review

By Dominic Ponsford

The BBC has claimed that a total audience of 21.1m viewers watched its TV news coverage of the Spending Review on Wednesday across various channels.

According to the BBC, the breakdown for individual programmes resulted in BBC Breakfast gleaning an audience of 1.6m; News At Six, five million; the regional 6.30pm news, 5.8m; News At Ten, 4.9m and Newsnight, 1.1m. The BBC News Channel also reached 3.8m viewers.

The BBC News website had around 4.2 m UK unique users on 20 October. The BBC said this was its biggest daily audience since the general election in May when 7.4m logged on.

The “Live: Spending Review” page received almost 2.5 million UK page views on Wednesday, the corporation said, while around 800,000 website users downloaded audio and video.

Mark Byford, BBC deputy director general and head of journalism, said: “We knew from our research that the audience had an extraordinary interest in the Spending Review issues.

‘In that context, we marshalled the specialist teams of BBC Journalism to come together and provide a service of high quality and impact. These figures show that during a major news story audiences turn to the BBC in huge numbers for trusted news and analysis.”

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