Category: Impolitic

<![CDATA[Dispelling the Myth of Readership Decline:

The industry has touted the notion of readership — a metric that takes into account how many people read the paper whether they buy it or not — for years, but has often taken halfhearted steps toward giving it true legitimacy.

Then there’s the confounding, if promising, online angle. If you count Web traffic, newspapers are actually more popular than ever.

More thoughtful confirmation of the point I’ve been making: The crisis is not in the business of publishing, but in the resistance of the publishing industry to changing delivery mechanisms. Then, there’s the potential in bringing new contributors into the news gathering and production process.
Folks like to talk crisis, because it is good business to declare change is afoot. The reality is that there is nothing but opportunity in change.

Technorati Tags: journalism, newspaper, publishing, online advertising, citizen journalism

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<![CDATA[MediaPost Publications – Papers Turn In Worst Print Ad Quarter Yet, Online Fuels ’05 Growth – 11/23/2005:

THE GOOD NEWS ACCORDING TO official newspaper industry estimates released Tuesday is that ad spending climbed 2.4 percent in the third quarter. The bad news for the still primarily print medium is that print ad sales rose just 1.6 percent, while sales for online editions soared 26.7 percent. The third quarter’s modest gain is the medium’s worst advertising performance in what has been a decidedly negative year for most papers. In addition to slackening ad demand, major publishers have had to contend with rising costs, declining circulation and several rounds of job cuts at major papers.

However, the silver lining comes from newspapers’ online properties, which will continue to grow its share of newspaper revenues. Online readership is growing at a healthy pace, and more and more advertisers will shift their budgets online in pursuit of greater targeting and reporting capabilities.

Following up on the “newspapers are dying” noise of a few weeks back, the newspapers may not deliver so much paper anymore, but they are in a position to be solid players in local news. The problem will be costs, which no publisher is comfortable undertaking to win readers’ confidence (since only ads bring in the Real Money, as far as publishers are concerned), which is why local citizen journalist networks are likely to ignite the local news scene. The papers will have all these salespeople seeking new inventories—and the CJ sites will have it. The exit strategy for all those citizen journalism companies, however, will be a return to the news organizations through acquisition. That’s when we’ll see if the spirit of citizen journalism will survive the assault of mammon.

Technorati Tags: blogging, democracy, journalism, Media, media economics, press, publishing

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<![CDATA[MediaPost Publications – CBS Seeks Video Search, On-Demand Deals – 11/23/2005:

On the heels of a report that CBS is in talks with Google for video search and on-demand video deals–and others including DirecTV for on-demand video–now comes word that

CBS is also in talks about expanding its deal with Comcast. “We are talking with our affiliates right now,” said a CBS spokesman.

On November 8, CBS and Comcast made a deal that enabled viewers to buy some CBS shows for 99 cents through Comcast’s on-demand service. Those shows include commercials.

CBS’ Chairman Les Moonves said CBS shows would be available only in those Comcast markets where CBS affiliates are owned by CBS Corp., and where Comcast systems existed.

The beautiful irony of broadcast network television is that, unlike pay TV, it needs reach to make its advertising business work. Yet, here we see CBS balancing its affiliate relationships with the opportunity to provide VOD through Comcast systems. What happens to the affiliates when the company goes with Google to search and sell downloads of shows? Does anyone really expect people will pay for gameshows, for example? No, they’ll exist on product placement fees.
The upshot is that a lot of the redundant crap that fills the network and affiliate airwaves will vanish from the scene. Both sides of that distribution equation will be seeking new programming to fill the “Crap Gap,” meaning that, like the 1950s when television was new and programming just invented at the local and national levels independently, a huge opportunity for producers will open up. In the 1950s, every region had a clown who introduced cartoons, something like that will return (though I don’t think this means a new career for J.P. Patches and Brakeman Bill, the Seattle-area renditions of this kind of programming).

Technorati Tags: broadcast, Google, podcasting, television, video

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