Long-term strength, viability by PAUL LEE Author’s note: This article pertains to national and metropolitan media. I have no knowledge of the strength and viability of Minot media other thanPatron.
But that has changed. The forty-fourth Super Bowl in February was sans one heavyweight, consistent advertiser. Pepsi opted out of the annual broadcast classic and redirected its advertising expenditure to the Internet. This is not good news for the national media – sports or otherwise. For print media, readership and circulation have declined, resulting in fewer news and advertising pages. Many national magazines are a shadow of their former selves, lacking weight and thickness. Plus, many magazines and newspapers give away their content free on the Internet, limiting the potential for advertising sales, subscriptions, and newsstand purchases. This may be irreversible for most print media because Web surfers expect free content to continue, which they have enjoyed since the emergence of the Internet. Only a few media whose brand is highly valued stand a chance of charging for their content online. (More on this later.) Another exception may be local media with little competition for content and advertising. The current atmosphere has proven toxic for some media. The Rocky Mountain News of Denver and the Seattle Post Intelligencer ceased operations. Star Tribune of the Minneapolis and the Chicago Tribune – which owns the Los Angeles Times – have filed for bankruptcy. The Christian Science Monitor has stopped its print edition but will remain on the Web. U.S. News and World Report has gone from weekly to monthly. Reader’s Digest has filed for bankruptcy and reduced its publishing schedule to 10 issues per year, as have other magazines. Gourmet and Modern Bride magazine closed. Even Patron is not immune from these challenges. Listenership for radio and viewership for television have declined, and advertising dollars have diminished for both mediums. Increasingly, good programming is available on the Web. In 2006, Media Buyer Planner reported that surfing the Internet reached a milestone. It equaled television watching as the most popular pastime. The interactivity of online surfing is more engaging than watching television passively. Radio and television are struggling. The radio giant Clear Channel Communication is restructuring its debt. GE sold NBC – including NBC News – to cable giant Comcast in part because of economics. ABC News is laying off 20 percent of its staff. (See more below.) On cable, CNN is consistently in third place due to competition from conservative Fox News and liberal MSNBC where viewers can find content that reinforces opinions they hold already. There are challenges to an extremely profitable aspect of newspaper advertising: classifieds. Less expensive competition, such as craigslist.org, and free classified advertising supplied by local television stations and other vendors are making inroads into the once-dominant monopoly by local newspapers. In January 2010, CBS News reported on a Kaiser Family Foundation study that found youth spend almost as much time using media – in all its forms – as an adult does working and as all people do sleeping. Citing employment data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in January, The Huffington Post reported that more than one-third of a million jobs related directly or indirectly to traditional communications will evaporate over the next decade. Among the top ten professions suffering employment losses are: wired telecommunications carriers – e.g., landline telephone companies – (73,000), newspaper publishers (81,000), printing and related support activities (95,000), and postal service (98,000), the latter which distributes magazines and other pieces of mail. Some members of the traditional media are pulling double-duty to preserve their jobs and influence. For example, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek appears as a paid commentator MSNBC. Print journalists today must be flexible, appearing on cable news networks and Web sites, if not for money then to promote themselves and their publication. It has long been acknowledged that the Right has dominated talk radio. Rush Limbaugh rules on radio. Liberal talk radio has fallen flat. (More on this later.) However, most observers acknowledge that the Left is dominating the Internet (e.g., Daily Kos, The Huffington Post). Sure, there’s Drudge Report, the Web site by the conservative Matt Drudge, but that Web site contains mostly links to other news sources and relative little original content. Media scenarios Let take a look at some news about the national media: In January 2009, The New York Times denied rumors that it was bankrupt, reported The Atlantic in its January/February issue. However, the Times had taken some steps to better manage its debt: drawing down its 2011 line of credit; selling or closing some operations, such as the Boston Globe; seeking to enter into a sale-leaseback of its corporate headquarters; seeking to sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox; and finding other financial solutions. In December 2009, The Washington Post reported that D.C. conservative rival The Washington Times accepted the retirement or dismissed top editors and slashed its staff by 40 percent. The Times also discontinued coverage of local news, sports, and features. It has lost $2 billion since its founding in 1982. The Washington Post closed its remaining domestic bureaus in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, reported Politico in November 2009. “At a time of limited resources and increased competitive pressure, it’s necessary to concentrate our journalistic firepower on our central mission of covering Washington and the news, trends, and ideas that shape both the region and the country’s politics, policies, and government,” executive editor Marcus Brauchli told Politico. In February, Reuters reported that ABC News, which is owned by the Walt Disney Co., planned to reduce its workforce by 20 percent, some 300 to 400 positions. ABC News had fallen victim to declining viewership, Internet competition, and turmoil in the economy. ABC News President David Westin said the news operation would increase use of new technology and focus on digital journalists and reporters who can produce their own material. The Huffington Post reported in January that Air America, the liberal radio network, filed for bankruptcy and was shutting down. Using the euphuism “Air America is ceasing its live programming operations,” the network acquiesced to the notion that talk radio is largely the bastion of conservatives. The Post said the average age of talk radio listeners is over 65, which age group is mostly Republican. Younger people who are often more liberal tend not to listen to talk radio. Referring to it as “a weekly weakling,” the New York Post observed that Newsweek is a much small news magazine in almost every dimension with the exception of its page size. It has fewer pages. It has lower circulation from 2.6 million to 1.5 million. Its advertising revenue declined 27 percent, due almost entirely to the circulation decline. It lost $28.1 million in 2009, but Newsweek expects profits to stabilize by 2010 Epilogue The bad news about media is that many national and metropolitan outlets are doing poorly. The good news about media is that many local media operations are doing well or holding their own. The Suburban Newspapers of America and the National Newspaper Association say community newspapers are doing “exceptionally well given the economic downturn affecting all industries.” The media landscape has changed, probably for good. The future of big media is probably more like Politico and NPR, and those print media that can charge for online access to their content. Politico (politico.com) is largely a web-based outlet offering balanced political news. It also has a low-circulation – at least low (less than 40,000) when compared to USA Today, The New York Times, and The Washington Post – print version that is distributed in the Washington, D.C. area. Due in part to the 2008 election, ratings for National Public Radio rose the following year 9 percent to 21 million listeners weekly, bucking a trend away from radio-listening in America. Though considered to have a liberal bias by conservatives, the NPR audience is up nearly 50 percent since 2000, being sparked in part by the events of September 11, 2001. One solution to print media’s woes, according to some observers, is to charge for content online. Except for print media with a strong brand – say, The New York Time, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post – that ship has sailed, to use a well-worn metaphor. The New York Observer reported in January that after three months of charging for its content on the Web, New York’s Newsday sold fewer than three-dozen subscriptions. Subscriptions are $5 per week or $260 per year. It will be next to impossible for print media to start charging for online content after giving it away free for a decade or so. At first, putting content online free was an add-on, something print media thought they should do. To state another over-used metaphor – you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. |
For decades, the Super Bowl was the dominant venue for creative advertising. Companies spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising agency handiwork and millions more airing the advertisements, hoping to be the most-talked-about 30 seconds of the most-watched football game of the season. And it worked for more than 40 years.