Future Of News - Oct. 9th

Message From Michael                    
                                                  October 9, 2006

                                                                                

• The Future of News – A Special Report

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After a newspaper reported his death, Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”  In a similar but not so eloquent vein, the Radio Television News Directors Foundation reports that “the imminent demise of traditional news media are premature.”  In a recently released survey of more than 1,000 people AND more than 250 television news directors, the foundation reports that the problem isn’t so much mass defection as “a splintering of traditional mass medium into fragments whose total is mass but whose parts are not.”  It’s not so much that new media is replacing old media so much as new media is “nibbling away at the edges.”  And the report questions whether new media has a ‘mass media’ future.  In any case, what follows is your favorite consultant’s analysis.  What I have done is break it out under three headings – overview, oddities and observations.  A disclaimer – translating a 50-plus page report into a 25-hundred word summary is… well, simplistic.  And, yes, this MfM is a little longer than usual, but it beats the hell out of reading all that.

OVERVIEW

Not surprisingly, and as already reported, the report says that, people overwhelmingly (65.5%), get most of their news from local TV.  Somewhat surprisingly the Internet scored fifth out of seven as a major source for news – well behind newspapers (28.4%), network news (28.3%) and local radio (14.7%). The Internet only beat out national newspapers which scored 3.8% and the nebulous ‘someplace else’ at 1.3%.  When asked the ‘bottom line’ question if you could get the same news whenever you wanted, the general public chose TV by a wide margin (63.3%), over newspapers (17.8%) while the Internet came in third (11.1%), radio fourth (5.8%) and handheld electronic devices at 2%.    

ODDITIES

• In the survey, the general public was asked to define the ‘newsiness’ of various programs on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being definitely not news and 5 being definitely is news.  On that basis, local TV news along with cable news and network news all scored a 4.4.  Think about that for a minute.  Shouldn’t they have been a 5, or at least a 4.9?  It’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, but that means they all scored a B+ in newsiness.(FYI – Local radio newscasts scored a 4 on the scale, ahead of programs like 60 Minutes and Dateline (3.7), Sunday morning interview shows (3.5), weekday morning news shows (3.4).  Cable talk shows scored higher (2.9) in newsiness compared to radio talk shows (2.4).  Surprisingly, at least to me, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (at 2.1) actually fell behind programs like Inside Edition and Entertainment Tonight (2.3) and tied with talk shows like Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres.)  Blogs, by the way, came in dead last at 1.9.Interestingly, Republicans, Democrats and Independents all seemed to agree on basic ‘newsiness’ when defining what constitutes a news program.


• Despite the billboards and sponsorships in newscasts, only one out of five people (21.5%) say they’ve ever seen a sponsored segment on news.  News directors, understandably, expected it to be four times as high as that with 81.7% saying they expected viewers to notice the sponsored segments.  Nobody tell the advertisers about that figure.


• Only a third (32.8%) of the public say they’ve seen a news story that seemed more like a commercial.  Again, even the news directors had to be shocked, when you consider that 85.7% of them thought the public would say they had seen that happen.  IF the public had seen a news story that seemed more like a commercial, nearly two thirds (60.7%) said their reaction would be negative while a third (34.5) said it doesn’t matter.


• Okay, this may just be me, but I found it odd that nearly one in ten news directors admitted they were considering either product endorsement by their anchors (7.2%) or product placement within their newscasts (8.8%).  Of course, the vast majority say they aren’t doing it or considering it.  And I should note the research has a +/- factor of 6%.


• Despite all the effort I see at stations behind marketing and promotion, only one in ten viewers (9.9%) say they’ve noticed “any new efforts to entice them to watch.”  More than three quarters (75.3%) said nope, hadn’t noticed anything new.  That’s even though more than two thirds of the news directors (69.7%) said they were doing new things to try to get people’s attention and get them to watch.  Of those who had noticed though, nearly half (46.2%) said it had worked and gotten them to watch, but that was only 4.6% of the total surveyed.  I should note that research I’ve seen shows anywhere from 30% to 35% of the public saying they tune in specifically because of promos.  I should also note that even in this research, nearly a fifth (19.7%) say they watch for something specific.


• And despite all the hoopla about blogs, more than half of the American public (52.3%) never even read them while one in six (16%) they don’t even know what they are.  Only 3.1% of the public say they read blogs every day while nearly one in five news directors (17.9%) read them every day.  Of course, one in five news directors (21.9%) never read them at all.


• Further evidence that new media hasn’t exactly taken over is that when asked, most people (77%) would prefer to read a newspaper in print rather than online (17.6%).  The younger crowd preferred the online version, but not by much (20.2%).  The higher the income, the more likely people will want to read news online (26.2% of the over $100K crowd).  And shock of shocks, most people (78.5) would not pay for the newspaper or news online. Even if they were forced to pay for information online, people say they would simply try to find another news site.

OBSERVATIONS

• Income and Education seemed a greater determinant of viewing variability than either age, gender or ethnicity.  Again, I should say emphasize that it seems that way to me.  For example, the higher the income the lower local TV scores as a source of news; the higher the education the lower local TV scores as a source of news.  Even more telling was that interest in crime stories and accidents fell as income and education rose while interest in national news and world news beat out the traditional number one interest – weather – as income and education rose.


• Young people, not surprisingly, are more familiar with, more comfortable with and more willing to use new media devices to get their news, BUT the numbers while dramatic are not overwhelmingly dramatic.  For example, only 4.4% of the general public say they have ever watched news on a mobile phone while 13.1% of the 18-24 year olds have done so.  Actually people making over $100K were more likely to have watched news on handheld devices.  And when asked if they were interested in watching news on small portable devices, 15.7% of the 18-34 year olds said yes, compared to 5.5% of those over 35.


• Despite the low general public interest in getting news on PDA’s, portable media players and mobile phones, news departments are moving more of their content to those delivery systems.  While only 7.5% of the public want news on their PDA’s, more than a fifth of the news directors (22.7%) said they were making news available on PDA’s; and while only 8.3% of the public want news on portable media players, 19.5% of the news directors said they were doing it on digital audio players; and while one in ten people (10.6%) say they want to get news on their mobile phones, nearly a third of the news directors (29.1%) said they were making news available on mobile phones.  


• The report, inadvertently, re-emphasized the growing phenomenon of what the Middletown Media Studies called Concurrent Media Exposure and what BigResearch called Simultaneous media use.  When asked what their major source of news was, people cited a number of sources so that the total actually added up to more than 160%.  A clear indication of the multiple use.


• I am not sure why I found it particularly interesting, but I did – Internet users make a very clear distinction between news and information.  When searching, they are usually looking for both (37.5%) but information (25.2%) trumps news (17.9%).  And they say that while information is part of news (48.1%), it is not as clear that news is part of information (28.9%).


• A surprising number of people (40%) said they would like to be able to put together their own newscasts.  Of course, on the flip side, more people (46%) said they weren’t interested, while one in ten (10.4%) say it doesn’t matter.  Here, education became a critical factor with the higher the education the higher the interest.  As the report puts it, there is a tipping point based on college graduation “where the balance goes from a plurality wanting others to do it to a plurality saying they want to do it themselves.”


• A very large proportion of the American public wants to interact with their TV, but not nearly as many as news directors thought.  A third (33.6%) of the public were ‘very interested’ in such interaction (defined as pressing a button to get more information on something you see in a newscast) while another third (27%) were somewhat interested.  More than 90% of the news directors expected people to be somewhat or very interested in interacting with TV news.  (Anybody remember the Belo Corporation’s Cue Cat interactive device?)

OVERVIEW – MORE SPECIFICS

• Although one in five people (19.7%) say they watch TV news in response to specific events (and, perhaps, news promos), most (58.5%) say they do it simply when they are able to do it.  In this situation, the 18-24 year olds had a slightly lower incidence (48.6%) saying they watch when they can.


• Nearly two thirds (60%) of the general public say TV newscasts look pretty much the same.  TV news directors thought the number was going to be even higher (85.7%).  Oddly, the most educated group were less likely to say newscasts looked the same.  The main reason cited by people for differences was the anchors (45.8%), with stories far behind (21.1%) and both factors coming into play for a third (30.4%).


• Fewer than half (47%) of the general public subscribe to newspapers, with young adults (18-34) considerably less likely (40%).


• Nearly half (45%) say they rely on more than one source for news – a fact which the report says “is potentially important as we move more and more into an on-demand world.”  Fewer (38.5%) say they skip a story once they’ve seen it in one place.


• People are most interested in urgent, breaking news, giving it a 4.5 in importance on a scale of 1 to 5.  Although the original reports on the study said “live” was a distant second, I don’t see it as that distant.  It scored a 4, just barely ahead of ‘regular news about the community (3.9).  Investigate scored a 3.6 while human interest features scored a 3.2.  The younger group scored live higher in second place while the over 35 crowd rated community news higher.


• Nine out of ten people say being “up to the minute” is important with 58.1% calling it very important and 33% calling it somewhat important.  News directors rated “up to the minute” higher in terms of very important. As education and income rose, the importance of being up to the minute dropped.


• As expected from all the research we’ve seen, weather was the top interest item across the board, scoring 4.2 on the scale.  But a little unexpected, news from around the country scored equally high (4.2) and news from around the world almost as high (4.1).  Information about politics, education, health care and the environment also scored high (4.1).  Features about people scored in the mid range (3.5) as did stories about crime and accidents (3.4), information about money (3.3) and consumer information (3.2.)  Not surprisingly, sports was on the low end of the scale (2.7) barely beating out entertainment news (2.5) and restaurant and movie reviews (2.4).


• The general public likes their anchors with 58.6% saying the news is better with anchors, but with a substantial minority (28.4%) saying news would be better without anchors.  News Directors expected the anchor slant to be much greater.

A SIDENOTE

• People think businesses exert a lot of influence on television news (35%) or at least a little influence (36.9%).  Only a little more than one in five (22.3%) say business has no influence.  When asked if that would make a difference to them, nearly half (48.5%) said it would be a big difference while one in four (27.7%) say it would make a little difference.  The report warns that any blurring of the lines between news and commercials risks a backlash and that “the research suggests that stations should tread carefully in this area.”  As a side note to the side note, the number one thing the public said would improve local TV news was – fewer commercials.

FOOTNOTE

• Coincidentally, David Mindich, a professor at St. Mary’s College in Vermont and author of Tuned Out, about youth indifference to news, spoke to a conference here at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.  He made the point that the drop in news interest can not be simply labelled the fault of either young people or the news media.  Young people are not dumb and there is some great journalism being done.  The ‘culprit’ is the growing entertainment factor in media in general and when news tries to “out-entertain entertainment, it loses.”  He argues there are certain expectations people have of news.  The analogy he made was that if he offered ‘jello shots’ to his students, a) he would screw it up because he doesn’t know how to make them and b), students would be shocked by the offer and wouldn’t accept them.  He says news organizations need to avoid talking down to viewers, introduce more passion into the news and offer more “road maps” to the news because, as one student told him, following the news was like entering a math class halfway through the semester.


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