The BBC News at Six and 10 may disappear from television screens to bring news foremost to digital, the corporation’s director of news has revealed.

In an interview with the Telegraph, Fran Unsworth predicted that news will be in the “digital space” with output delivered by BBC iPlayer within the next five or 10 years.

And despite the surge in young people watching news bulletins during the pandemic, Unsworth said she was not under any illusions that this would continue.

Fran Unsworth told the paper: “Ultimately in 10 years’ time, we probably won’t be consuming linear bulletins exactly. I mean, I might be wrong about that. I doubt it.”

“There might be one [bulletin] a day, or something. I think there’ll be fewer of them. But … it’ll be in the digital space, it’ll be on, you know, iPlayer. It’ll be on your tablet, your iPhone.”

Commenting on the surge of young people watching news related to Covid-19 she said, “I’ve seen it in the past. You get these big peaks, the big stories like the Bataclan and London Bridge attacks, then the audience falls off again quite rapidly.”

Unsworth’s predictions can be seen already in the latest Ofcom News report released this week.

Eight in ten people (83%) are accessing news about Covid-19 at least once a day in August compared to 99% in March, the report showed.

Read the Telegraph’s interview here.