The British Broadcaster Is Coming

As the anchor of the evening news for RTE, Ireland’s national broadcaster, Caitríona Perry couldn’t walk down the streets of Dublin without attracting a crowd. So when she moved to the US to take on the role of chief presenter for the BBC in Washington, in August of 2023, she found the anonymity refreshing. Then, in the run-up to the US presidential election, things started to change. People began stopping Perry on the street, even as she was coming out of the CVS with her daughter. “I took it to be a good sign that more people were watching,” Perry told me. “But not a scientific measure.”

According to Allison Rivellini, a BBC spokesperson, the site received a record seventy-seven million US visitors in September. That moved it up seven spots in the news category compiled by Comscore, a private analytics firm that measures audiences across platforms, to its highest ranking ever, putting the BBC ahead of the AP, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. The latest YouGov survey ranked the BBC second in terms of trust, trailing only the Weather Channel.