The battle for rolling news

For the first time, BBC News 24 has recorded better figures than Sky News ? or has it? As an inquiry into the BBC channel reaches its conclusion, Tim Luckhurst investigates the conflicting claims

Roger Mosey, head of television news at the BBC, is bullish about his much-criticised digital news channel, BBC News 24. He admits that it had "a slow and difficult birth" – even corporate insiders were sceptical. "With the virtue of hindsight," Mosey acknowledges, "we did not convince enough people internally about the need for News 24. That gave us two or three years of real hostility, but now we are accepted."

Confidence is particularly high with the publication of the latest Barb (British Audiences Research Board) viewing figures. They suggest that, for the first time since its launch in November 1997, News 24 is reaching more viewers than its older, commercial rival, Sky News.

The margin is slim. Barb assesses News 24's reach in April and May 2002 as 3.8 million viewers a week. Sky News was watched by 3.7 million. Still, as the former Financial Times editor Richard Lambert prepares to submit the findings of his independent inquiry into News 24 to the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, Mosey considers the ratings victory a cause for celebration.

"These figures represent a massive endorsement of News 24's distinctive programming" he says. "I think News 24 is the most Reithian channel on the BBC. It is a classic example of mainstream BBC news. It has elevated values. What the licence fee imposes on us is a duty to be good. News 24 has the most upmarket profile of any news station on television."

The Lambert report is due to reach the Department of Culture, Media and Sport this week. Indications are that Jowell will take time to consider its conclusions before making them public. Its remit is to "consider whether, in delivering its News 24 service, the BBC is acting in accordance with the facts and assurances upon which approval to proceed with the service was given."

It is worth remembering what those assurances were. The BBC's launch manifesto for News 24 promised that the station would extend the audience for rolling news, operate at a marginal cost and benefit all licence-payers.

Now Mosey makes a plausible but subtly different case. News 24, it seems, is no longer about bringing in new types of viewer. "We already do a lot to bring in under-served audiences. BBC 1 and programmes such as Liquid News are designed for that purpose. News 24's biggest deficit against Sky is perceived to be sports news. They also beat us at entertainment news. I'm comfortable with that. Our viewers actually want the serious stuff. We target serious news fans."

That is hard to dispute. News 24 suffers from the problem for all rolling news stations: it can be dull and relentless when the news agenda is not producing big stories. But when drama occurs, the resources of BBC news and current affairs are there to give the licence-fee-funded channel obvious advantages. Mosey cites, as an example, the coverage of the US presidential recount in Florida. "Sky had one correspondent in Washington," he says. "ITN News Channel had one correspondent reporting on the telephone. News 24 was in vision from Florida, with George Bush in Texas and able to use the services of a dedicated correspondent in Washington, DC, too."

That resource base, the result of News 24's integration into the BBC news machine, irritates Mosey's counterpart at BSkyB. Nick Pollard, head of Sky News, regards the rival channel as "a real market-distorter". Pollard has told Lambert a very different story from the one the BBC man is now keen to proclaim.

First, Pollard dismisses the ratings victory. He insists that Sky News consistently reaches a bigger audience than News 24. The Barb blip is a by-product of the collapse of ITV Digital. Sky News has never been available on digital terrestrial television. The collapse of the subscription channels on that service left viewers with restricted choice. As a result, many have begun to sample News 24 for the first time, simply because it is there. When News 24 and Sky News come head to head, in homes able to receive both via the direct-to-home satellite, Sky beats the BBC offering by two to one. On that basis, Sky attracted twice as many viewers on 11 September.

But Pollard's argument is not restricted to protesting: "We're still bigger." He considers Mosey's arguments about quality a deliberate attempt "to put clear blue water between News 24 and Sky". Worse, he says, the BBC has failed to deliver on its original promises to provide a service that would be available to all and capable of offering something not available elsewhere.

"News 24 is incredibly derivative," Pollard says. "They have found a format that works and created a 'me too' channel. Their problem is that we have a very good general-interest news channel. Sky News is informal, friendly and authoritative. We complement that with speed, accuracy and an aggressively competitive journalistic instinct. News 24 conspicuously fails to get value for what the BBC spends on it."

That spending is a lot. Published figures show that the BBC has invested £250m in News 24. That's £50m per year, against £20m for the Sky News service. Pollard suspects that the figure hides substantial investment in services shared with other BBC news outlets and is adamant that "News 24 benefits from vast cross-channel promotion. They plug mercilessly. We can't."

He points out that despite that, "Sky News won the Bafta award for news coverage of 11 and 12 September. We won the news Bafta in what could be seen as one of the biggest news years since the Second World War. If you go into Downing Street, they are watching Sky, not BBC News 24."

Mosey accepts that his channel can improve. But he does not share the opinion of the BBC's own George Alagiah, who recently described News 24 as a "treadmill of running news, only marginally updated on the hour". Mosey says: "We do need to enhance quality further, particularly in the second half of each hour and at weekends. But without News 24, events such as Tony Blair's press conference would not have been on BBC television. The market would not give David Aaronovitch half an hour to debate the news with Janet Daley [of The Daily Telegraph]. So, yes, News 24 needs to be cleverer in news coverage. It has a lot of time and can use it better, but it has proved its worth."

Pollard says News 24 has proved something else. Namely, that the BBC is guilty of not doing what it said it would do, to win the licence, and of doing precisely what it said it wouldn't. He urges the Government to look very hard at the News 24 model, while considering the pledges the BBC is making in pursuit of consent to launch further digital TV channels.

Pollard acknowledges that BBC News 24 is almost certainly here to stay. "I can't see that there isn't room for two 24-hour news channels, but it could have been a lot more innovative – a lot more challenging." That is likely to be Lambert's view, too.