8 August
2007

















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     trust, traffic and tv

Three reports on 'old media' in the age of the net.

     trust

For much commercial publishing trust equals traffic equals spending by corporate advertisers. It is thus unsurprising to see that the UK Association of Online Publishers (AOP) has promoted a new report claiming that newspaper and magazine readers trust web publications.

The AOP claims that 81% of newspaper readers and 74% of magazine readers felt print and online media were as trustworthy and reliable as their print counterparts. Not a great shock, surely, if the online text is a digital edition of what you use to wrap the garbage or insulate the kitty litter.

The report reflects a survey of around 27,000 users on AOP member websites, "which include Guardian Unlimited, Times Online, Emap and Conde Nast".

13% of newspaper readers said they had more trust in the print product; 7% had more trust in online. A fifth of magazine readers placed greater trust in the print product; 7% trusted the corresponding site.

AOP's researchers concluded that 'brand' was more important than the medium.

60% of respondents indicated that they used print and online for different needs. Around two thirds indicated that web information was easier to access than print and that the internet was faster for finding information. Yes, and the ink doesn't rub off on your paws.

     traffic

US media industry financier Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) similarly echoes conventional wisdom in a report forecasting that US consumers will spend more of their day surfing the net than reading newspapers, going to the movies or listening to recorded music and that accordingly advertisers will continue to colonise the web.

VSS claims that we are experiencing a "a watershed moment" in mass media, with internet advertising to reach US$63 billion in 2011. (For reference, it estimates that ad spending on newspapers in 2006 was US$55.7 billion, with broadcast television worth US$48.7 billion.)

The VSS consumers spent most time in 2006 with television and radio (aggregate 70% of time spent with media), followed by "recorded music" (5.3%), newspapers (5%) and the net (5%).

Overall time "spent with media" declined slightly in 2006, attributed to "the consumer shift" away from newspapers and broadcasting, with US time per capita down 0.5% to 3,530 hours pa. Digital media supposedly "typically requires less time than traditional media", with consumers watching broadcast or cable television for at least 30 minutes per session, but spend as little as five minutes watching UGC video clips.

In practice, of course, many people continue to multitask - listen to radio or watch television while reading a newspaper or even, horror, yet another industry report on fickle audiences. Perhaps the solution is more compelling content and fewer intrusive ad breaks.

VSS forecasts that from this year onwards the net will occupy more US audience time than newspapers or recorded music, with net hours up to 5.1% and newspapers and recorded music down to 4.9%. One objection to that forecast is that much recorded music is already being consumed online.

     tv

American Newspapers and the Internet; Threat or Opportunity?, a report (PDF) by Bivings Research that offers a view of "America's top 100 newspaper websites", claims that 92% of leading US newspapers offer video on their websites, up from 61% in 2006.

93 papers offer RSS partial text feeds (all without ads); three offer full text RSS feeds. 95% of the sites feature at least one reporter blog (up from 80% last year), of which over 90 allow reader comments. 30% of the sites now allow comments on articles. 49% offer podcasts. 29% require some form of register for full access to the site. It is unclear whether reader comments are significantly adding to the user experience.

Bivings notes that the 39 of the 'video' sites feature original vide content, 26 use AP video streams and 13 offer video content from local broadcasters. Can't have too much blurry 'hyperlocal' video of kittens in trees or syndicated footage of US highway patrol chases if you are part of the media herd.

Looking on the bright side, Bivings comments

While many industry experts fear that the Internet will spell the end of newspapers as we know them ... [ Bivings] feels that the Internet presents newspapers with a unique opportunity to make up for lost circulation and readership.

That may well be so, although one might question whether papers will recapture lost audiences in a space where they are competing with online television broadcasters and narrowcasters? Forecasts of the imminent demise of "newspapers as we know them" have so far proved to be as unfounded as Bill Gates' prophecy that spam would be extinct by 2007. The 'add a blog, a dash of podcasting and a bit of video' recipe for audience recovery is redolent of

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