STATE OF THE NEWS MEDIA – PART TWO
IF MONTY PYTHON ANALYZED THE NEWS. You can't help thinking about some of the skits from the comedy series as you read the report by the Project for Excellence. Okay, I can't help but think about the skits. You know, the one in which they're collecting bodies during the Plague and one insists he isn't dead, so they give him a conk on the head to make him dead; or the one about the guy who tries to return his dead parrot for a refund, arguing that it isn't dead, just napping; or the one in which the knight guarding a bridge crossing has his legs and arms cut off but insists on continuing to fight because they're only 'flesh wounds.' The difference is that the Python skits are intentionally humorous, while the report is unintentionally darkly humorous.
For example, if you read some of the coverage of the report, it seems like things are a lot better. One article about local TV news was even headlined – finally, some good news. Even the headline on the local TV section itself read – good news after the fall. Well, not really. Yes, the report says, the overall TV audience held steady, and yes, revenues rose sharply. So, like the knight, local TV news operations are still itching for a fight. Except that the newscasts in ALL the key time slots (5a -7a, 5p – 7p and 11p) were down. The so-called prime time newscasts (10pm) lost more audience than news in any other time slot. An example of that dark humor was that the report says a "positive sign" is that the newscasts lost audience at less than half the rate they had been losing audience. Compensating for that loss was the addition of new time periods – 4:30 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. Plus, the number of independents offering news doubled, although most of them were news offerings produced by network-affiliated stations trying to amortize costs and resources. And that revenue improvement? True, 17.5% is better than the 7.5% projected, but when adjusted for inflation, the report authors say the average station revenue has dropped by almost half in just the past nine years.
And, yes, advertising revenues continue to fall for newspapers, and print circulation continues to fall. But despite all the gloom and doom about newspapers, the report authors note that it is still a profitable business. Of course, its profit margin are only about five percent and that is about a quarter of what it once was, and that is about the same profit margin as you see in grocery stores which deal in massive volumes to compensate. But hey, they're not dead. They're just mostly dead. Or, as the newspaper section authors put it, "the clock continues to tick on finding strong supplementary revenue streams as print seems certain to stagnate or decline even further."
If we were to do one of those popular "by the number" summaries of the magazine industry, they would be 1/4, 3X, 22%, 70 and ½. It is the report's comparison of what may be the most unsuccessful news magazines, Newsweek, with what may arguably be the most successful news magazine, The Economist. You already know, of course, that Newsweek was sold for $1 and assumption of debt. Okay, here's how it goes: The Economist with one-fourth the circulation of Newsweek sold 22% more ad pages and generated three times as much circulation revenue per copy sold… by marketing itself as a "higher quality editorial product" even though it had only 70 writers which is half the editorial staff of Newsweek.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT – PERSPECTIVE. The report notes what most of us already know, but which is worth repeating. News programs remain the single most important source of local station revenue, accounting for nearly half (45%). The five hours a day of news, which most stations average, brings in almost as much revenue as the other 19 hours combined. Despite all the seeming emphasis in the media about cable, the report notes that four times as many people watch the three broadcast networks' evening news than the three cable news audiences in prime time even tough prime time audiences are larger. And two times as many people watch the lowest rated broadcast evening program than the highest rated cable news program.
As noted in the Part One Message, the report says the future for many news operations depends on how groups embrace or enlist digital, especially with much of the digital agenda dependent on what are basically third parties – software developers and device makers. But to put that in perspective, digital only accounts for about five percent of the average local television station's revenue. In newspapers, digital accounts for more than twice that, but still relatively small numbers – 11.9%.
And for some further perspective on the digital direction being urged, the report notes the recurring problem that the digital audience is still not measured comparably or as reliably as more traditional media measurement systems. For example, the digital audience in terms of unique visitors per month at newspaper sites is up from 2001, but then again, they changed the measurement system. Even the Audit Bureau of Circulation is changing its way of measuring newspapers reach, basically meaning, the report implies, that any comparison with past metrics will either be invalid or less useful. The report authors note that while newspaper organizations insist they are transforming themselves, "the path is hardly a well-marked four-lane highway, and the effort seems comparable to chopping through the jungle with a machete."
For those who dismiss radio, sometimes called AM/FM, as old and outdated, technology, the report notes that it is still a dominant medium with nine out of ten adults listening. People spend more time listening to news on radio (15 minutes), then newspapers (10 minutes) and even the Internet (13 minutes), but well behind TV (32 minutes.) The problem, say the authors, is that radio is taken for granted. So, for example, when asked which medium has the most impact on their lives, radio comes in last.
FOOLS RUSH IN WHERE WISE MEN FEAR TO TREAD: With that headline as the preface, let me add some perspective to the debate about 'de-funding' (isn't that an interesting word) the Corporation for Public Broadcasting because of its reputed limited and liberal bias. That argument "may" work when the discussion is about PBS's Newshour, which has 1.1 Million viewers – about a sixth of the average commercial news program. And its digital efforts are similarly small. To make matters worse, the report cites a quote that I am sure the PBS people wish hadn't been said, and that is that every source of income -- other than the federal government -- has declined for the program. That argument about limited appeal is debatable at best, a complete non-sequitor at worst, though when it comes to National Public Radio. The report notes that NPR continues to be a growing source of news for many Americans with an increase of 3% in audience to 27.2 Million weekly listeners. Let me remind you, that is as much as the evening newscasts and more than the network morning newscasts. And to put that in further perspective, news/talk/ information radio is the second most popular format (behind country music), but that in reality there are only 30 All News commercial stations, and most of the others are more talk than news.
However, on the flip side of that, it should be noted that eight of the top ten talk show hosts on radio are conservatives, with Rush Limbaugh (15 Million) and Sean Hannity (14 Million) leading the pack. The top liberal talk show hosts average less than a fifth or a quarter of their conservative counterparts, with an average listening audience of 2.75 Million.
GOOD IDEAS GONE BAD: The report notes many examples of what seemed like the newest, latest, hottest trend that… well, just didn't quite work out. For example, partnerships between newspapers and television. The report says those approaches peaked in 2005 and have dropped steadily ever since. The much ballyhooed and still often cited concept of "hyperlocal news" has proven more expensive than expected, less lucrative than anticipated and more problematic. The partnership many newspapers have with Yahoo has been a two-edge sword. HD Radio, which many audiophiles, or at least radio broadcasters, thought would follow in the footsteps of HD TV and become the next big thing. Well, think again. Both listeners and the companies themselves have lost interest. After a surge of conversions in 2009, only 21 stations converted to HD in 2010 so that only one in seven radio stations are now HD. Now, the report says, the next big thing will be Internet radio in the car. The one I personally love is FM being built into cell phones. Apparently ten percent of cell phones already have it, but nobody knows it… including me.
OH, YEAH, BTW, THE JOURNALISM: Yet again, and as noted in previous messages, the prime focus of the report is on the 'business of journalism.' And, yes, that is understandable… to a point. There is at least a nod to the topic of journalism in the section "A Year in the News." It compared the mainstream media's coverage with the public interest, as measured by the blogosphere and social networking sites like Twitter. This section makes several interesting observations, including the fact that the public continued to have interest in many stories long after the news media had reduced coverage, that the public isn't nearly as interested in the "inside the Beltway" stories which receive extensive news media coverage; and even more interestingly, despite all this, the agenda on blogs was remarkably close to that of the mainstream agenda. For example, both maintained a consistently close watch on the economy. On the flip side, both the mainstream media and the public interest on the Afghan war was significantly low even though, the report authors note, 2010 recorded the highest death toll in the war since its beginning. No surprise, but the report notes that even when the agendas match, the blog conversations tended to be ideological debates.
The two news oddities – Twitter and CNN. Both had dramatically different agendas. Twitter's agenda more reflected both its techie audience and its broader world audience. The top topics on Twitter were, in order –Apple, Google, Twitter itself, Facebook, and at number five – the European Economy which scored significantly higher (7%) than the U.S. Economy (1%). CNN was described as the "cable outlier" and "odd man out" for its agenda, which reflected its breaking news focus. For example, most of its BP oil spill coverage (57%) was breaking news with significantly less (35%) focused on the responsibility of the federal government and the company. For both Fox and MSNBC, the numbers were exactly reversed. The report also noted an even 'less balanced' news agenda in general, with only two topics topping the 10% coverage mark in 2010 versus five topics in 2009.
But nowhere… and, yes, this is a criticism… did I see any discussion about the growing issue of so-called content farms or 'content mills' which are generating reams of debatable content, or of the reader responsive form of writing in which so-called news operations base their reporting on what articles get the most hits online. At the same time, to give credit to the report, one of the very, very cool features (and you know it's good when I use 'very' twice) is the News Interactive feature in which you can put in subjects and categories and see how various areas of the media covered them.
NOTE: This message is being sent by GMail, as I review my distribution list and methods.
DISCLAIMER: I have to admit that the Message summary seems significantly more negative than the report itself. My apologies. There is a lot of good to report, but there is a lot of balance that needs to be added as well. My apologies also for getting this second part out so late. There is a lot to digest, and even then, the summary doesn't do the report justice.
No comments:
Post a Comment