Dan Walker: “You just don’t get many opportunities like this”

When Ben Frow first met with the then-BBC Breakfast host Dan Walker to discuss a move to Channel 5’s flagship news show, he set out some high expectations for the lead anchor role.

If Walker took the job, Frow said, he would need to help deliver a 20% audience uplift for 5 News in his first year.

“I think Ben is quite refreshing in the TV industry,” says Walker. “I’m very brutally honest with him and he’s very brutally honest with me.”

This week marks one year since he officially started at 5 News, and Walker has exceeded those steep expectations. The hour-long 5pm news show has seen a 30% audience uplift.

Across the first quarter of 2023, ITN produced 5 News has grown 12% year-on-year among individuals, averaging 2.9% share and 301k viewers – and this upward trajectory has continued. Across April the programme was up 26% YoY amongst individual viewers and the overall programme share was up by 30% YoY.

Reach figures are calculated across the year and in 2022, 5 News reached more than 27m people.

The team also achieved huge growth digitally; on YouTube, total views were up 320% at 32m and watch time was up 309% with 55m total minutes viewed. On Facebook, 5 News ended the year with a 0.55% average engagement rate (against the 0.40% industry standard).

“I said, ‘There you go Ben!’” Walker laughs. “‘What do you want next year?’ And he said he wants an extra 2% on reach, so I said ‘Okay, let’s do it’.”

These challenging targets are exactly what motivated the prolific news and sport presenter to join 5 News. At the time he was first approached, Walker already held the coveted position as a presenter on BBC Breakfast, where he’d worked for six years, and says it was a position he’d have happily stayed in for years to come.

But, he says: “You just don’t get many opportunities where someone like Frow comes to you and says ‘Listen, I don’t just want you to do the news, there’s all of this additional opportunity too’.”

Alongside his role as lead anchor, Walker fronts ITN Productions’ series Vanished, which focuses on stories of currently missing people and is set to return for a second series. He has also led Daisybeck-produced Digging For Treasure with Michaela Strachan and Raksha Dave as well as upcoming series from Wag Entertainment Dan & Helen’s Pennine Adventure (w/t) alongside Helen Skelton.

BUILDING TRUST

Like the Channel 5 chief, Walker puts the news bulletin’s growing strength down to his ability to understand his audience.

More than 90% of the 5 News audience is over the age of 35, and Walker says it is vital that this is taken into consideration in every conversation about delivering the news. He also argues that the language he uses while presenting is deeply important to connecting with audiences.

“It should be ‘we’ are going through a cost-of-living crisis, not ‘you’,” he says. “It’s not a case of people struggling to find a doctor’s appointment, it’s that we are struggling. It opens a subject and shows the audience that you care and you’re there with them, rather than lecturing.”

This is something Walker feels 5 News has openly embraced, with regular feature 5 Phone encouraging viewers to call in with questions, facilitating a dialogue with audiences.

As news programming continues to fragment, with the rise of US-styled channels such as GB News and Talk TV entering the field and a growing feeling of distrust in an era rife with misinformation, Walker says that he aims to assure audiences by providing “news with feeling.”

“There’s a whole spectrum of how people present,” he explains. “On one end, there’s the ‘this is my opinion and I’m going to shout about it’ group, and on the other end there’s presenting cold hard facts with no personality.”

Walker’s “news with feeling” represents a middle ground, he says, and is an essential part of his method.

He also touts 5 News’ flexibility, which has allowed him to embrace live breaking news as it happens. Recently, the presenter broke an exclusive, live text conversation with his former colleague, sports presenter Gary Lineker, who at the time was embroiled in an impartiality row with the BBC.

“That’s proper breaking news, but there’s a way of doing things and I’d never try to be sensationalist or over-egg it,” he says. Instead, he says, his focus was on offering clear explanations, to bring the audience with him as the story unfolded.

He’d also texted fellow pundits Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, who got back to him just after the show had ended. “That’s a really good example of how the 5 News team is really mobile, and not too obsessed with structure,” he says. “I feel very confident in those situations.”

Walker argues that his focus on clarity and sober explanations is crucial in the face of growing public distrust – which he sees as the biggest current challenge for TV news.

As a presenter, he says, he never wants the audience to care about what he thinks.

“The problem in TV often exists when there’s a disconnect between the person you’re seeing on TV and what’s happening in real life. When you lose that trust, it’s really hard to get it back,” he says.

When asked if he ever felt constrained by the BBC’s emphasis on ensuring impartiality during his time at the broadcaster, Walker is clear: “I wasn’t curtailed by the BBC, I see myself as an impartial broadcaster. I have worked in sport and I’ve worked in news, and news is different because the editorial control is tighter.

“Would I have said the things Gary has said in the past? No, but we don’t have anywhere near the same contract.”

He adds: “If you can’t watch Match of the Day because of Gary’s politics I think that says more about you than it does about him.”

He admits that the BBC can on occasion get things wrong, but he concludes: “Without the BBC, the media landscape would be a lot bleaker.”

Reputation

Walker’s reputation for his integrity is in part what has helped him to secure many significant interviews, not least his exclusive with Paul Ansell, the husband of the missing woman Nicola Bulley, who disappeared while walking her dog in Lancashire in late January. Her body was discovered nine days after the February 10 interview went out.

Walker approached the story from a point of view of empathy. “I know from covering previous cases, how horrible it is for a family. It feels like they can’t move without a camera pointed at them,” he says.

He first spoke to Ansell after reaching out via a family friend, with Ansell saying that Walker’s integrity encouraged him to have an initial, unfilmed conversation.

“That’s twenty years of ensuring I don’t stitch people up,” says Walker. “I will ask difficult questions, but I explain why I’m asking that question and always try to leave an interview in a nice way.”

For Walker, this is approach is about more than civility. In 2011, he interviewed friend and footballer Gary Speed on Football Focus. Later than night, Speed took his own life.

“Ever since then, I’ve got a permanent reminder of how you leave situations and interviews,” Walker says. “It was a nice conversation, but those were the last things I ever said to him and if it had gone differently, it would be a very different subject to look back on.”

With Ansell, Walker made sure to give Ansell had the freedom to back out at any point, and to talk through the questions with him ahead of time.

At the time of the interview, media interest in Nicola Bulley’s disappearance was at fever pitch, and ITN Productions, which makes 5 News, had scheduled a fast-turnaround Friday night special, which ultimately went out to an overnight audience of 1.2m (8.5%).

“I said to Paul that even moments before live, he could pull out at any time, and I think he realised we weren’t out to get him,” Walker says. “After the programme, he messaged to say he was happy.”

Walker says he still texts Ansell to check in with his family, saying he is conscious of the impact that interactions with journalists can have on people, and his own duty of care.

“Journalists have a real responsibility,” he says. “In a time when everyone wants a scoop and an exclusive, you have to be happy with how you’ve got it, and how much of your soul you’ve sold to achieve that.”