Aussies flock to the BBC during heavy news period

Nathan Jolly

October 23, 2025 11:15

Aussies flock to the BBC during heavy news period

Australians are turning to the BBC for international news

Australia’s top news sites took another tumble in September, after two months of audience gains that saw both ABC and news.com.au climb out of a mid-year slump.

However, the BBC has managed to draw local audiences during a month of heavy international news that included a public assassination, Donald Trump’s visit to the UK, and the attempted peace brokering of two wars.

The ABC remains the country’s most-read news website, with a modest 1.5% fall seeing the national broadcaster drop from 13 million monthly readers in August to 12.8m. News.com.au readers fell by 4.8% in September, largely wiping out its 5.4% leap the previous month. With just over 12 million monthly readers, there is now a gulf of 741,000 monthly readers between the top two news sites.

The Guardian, 7news, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Age all suffered moderate audience drops, while The Australian hasn’t managed to keep its freshly minted position in the Top 10, following last month’s improbable 45% ‘audience’ leap, from 3.575m in July to 5.186m in August – a fresh audience that largely consisted of third-party aggregators like Apple News and Google News sending curious clickers to a paywalled page.

This has since been course-corrected: this month The Australian has dropped to an audience of 3.815 million – much closer to its actual readership.

Aside from the BBC, only Nine.com.au, Yahoo Australia, and the Daily Mail Aus managed to increase their readership from August to September.

The BBC’s 18.5% leap is the biggest anomaly of the month, with some 750,000 additional readers bolstering its readership to 4.78 million. This was enough of a boost to see The Beeb bump The Australian from the Top 10 – a portent of the upcoming Ashes series perhaps?

And while we’re on tenuous sporting links, it’s surprising that local news sites largely dropped off the cliff during a month filled with local sporting headlines — the AFL Brownlow Medal and Grand Final, the NRL finals series leading to the early-October Grand Final, various trade rumours — plus the mushroom murder verdict, the search for Dezi Freeman after he killed a cop, a fatal shark attack in Sydney, and the conscious uncoupling of Our Nicole and Our Keith (born in Hawaii and NZ, respectively).

Maybe it’s news fatigue — or maybe Australians are turning away from the traditional mastheads for their news in 2025.

A glance down the rankings past the top ten might hold the answer — at least in regards to sporting coverage. The AFL’s official site, afl.com.au pulled 4.17 million readers in August, while Fox Sports’ site drew 3.58 million.