News About The Shift In News

There are continuing troubles ahead for traditional TV news programs as the most productive large, demographic segment for many marketers (adults, ages 18 - 49) shifts elsewhere. The first paragraph of this Ad Age article sums up the situation:

“The big three TV network newscasts lost about 1.2 million viewers last year, and advertising on their three big morning news shows fell to an estimated $1.03 billion. The average viewer is 60 years old, and the demographic marketers most want to reach is more likely to be facing a computer screen than a TV screen when the evening news comes on.”

Where are these lost television viewers getting their news now? The answer certainly isn’t newspapers because that medium has its own problems with audience attrition. An article yesterday at Editor & Publisher noted just-released figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations showing substantial circulation losses at many of the country’s largest dailies for the past six-month period: daily circulation down 3.5% and Sunday circulation down 4.5%. Mind you, this comes on the heels of a continuing 20-year circulation decline trend in the big newspaper category.

While newspaper online editions have seen increased visits, paper-based circulation (and the advertising that it generates) is what pays the bills for most newspapers. Declining revenues from advertising poses a vexing problem for both newspapers and network television.

Increasingly, people are getting their news from the Internet. A new poll from Zogby International surveyed nearly 2000 people and asked, among other things, “What is your primary source of news?” The results:

The Web...48%
Television...29%
Radio...11%
Newspapers...10%

Zogby has conducted this poll for the last couple of years and the shifts to reliance on the Web for news have been dramatic. In the Zogby poll, 70% of respondents “think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities.” However, 67% of those same respondents “view traditional journalism as out of touch.”

The above Zogby figures are for an overall audience. The shift from traditional news to web-based news is dramatically more pronounced when you look at audiences ages 18 to 29, or 18 to 49.

Andrew Nachison, a co-founder of iFocus, a media think tank in Reston, Va., had this to say regarding the Zogby results:

“For the second year in a row we have documented a crisis in American journalism that is far more serious than the industry’s business challenges - or maybe a consequence of them...[W]e see clearly the generational shift of digital natives from traditional to online news - so the challenge for traditional news companies is complex. They need to invest in new products and services - and they have. But they’ve also got to invest in quality, influence and impact. They need to invest in journalism that makes a difference in people’s lives. That’s a moral and leadership challenge - and a business opportunity for whoever can meet it.”