BBC election coverage in ratings flop as furious viewers issue Laura Kuenssberg axe demand
The BBC experienced a significant drop in viewership for this year's General Election; this report comes amid backlash over Laura Kuenssberg's comments towards Sir Ed Davey.
Ed Davey quizzed on post office scandal by Laura Kuenssberg
The 10pm coverage across BBC One, ITV, Channel 4, Sky News, GB News, and the BBC News Channel on Thursday was watched by a cumulative 7.3 million people, according to audience estimates by Barb.
This marked a decrease from the 9.9 million viewers in December 2019, indicating a significant decline in BBC’s viewership.
BBC One emerged as the ratings winner, with 4.2 million people tuning in across the hour. However, its viewership has decreased by a third since Huw Edwards hosted the last general election.
This year, Clive Myrie and Laura Kuenssberg jointly led the proceedings, with the latter receiving complaints about her comments towards Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey.
Carol Vorderman was among many who had publicly opposed Laura's alleged sly dig toward the Liberal Democrat leader.
The 47-year-old presenter interviewed Liberal Democrats leader began by explaining how the Liberal Democrats had “ruthlessly targeting seats where the Conservative had held them”.
During her Sunday politics show, she added: "This election made history for all sorts of reasons, and when you put the votes together, the smaller parties got their highest ever share of the votes."
Laura added: "Maybe it was the bungee jumping, or maybe given that the Liberal Democrats want to change the voting system, ironically perhaps they just learned how to play it better by ruthlessly targeting seats where the Conservatives had held them."
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A video was then shown of Ed and his party having a good time. Introducing him, she said: "Well, there he is, Ed Davey, the happiest man in Britain.
“He looked like he was there, celebrating winning more than 70 seats, and he joined us this morning from southwest London.
“Ed Davey, congratulations, I suppose, on your more than 70 seats.”
Countdown star Carol and many fans were irritated by Laura’s use of "I suppose" in her introduction as they called for her to be replaced by Victoria Derbyshire. One fan even branded the presenter “opinionated and often downright rude”.
Meanwhile ITV, whose coverage was led for the fourth time by Tom Bradby, also lost one million viewers to reach 1.3 million.
By contrast, Channel 4, whose coverage was led by Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Emily Maitlis along with panellists including Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart, Kwasi Kwarteng and Nadine Dorries, as well as Gogglebox stars, doubled its viewership to 930,000 as compared with 2019.
