We have been occasionally chronicling the ongoing shift in the delivery of information from print-on-paper to digital means, mostly via the internet. The hardest hit in the evolution has been the newspaper industry. As a group, they were caught off-guard when the world went web. They had seen safe, growing circulations as the Baby Boomer generation came matured and started buying their newspapers.
But what the print folks didn’t see – perhaps because they didn’t bother to look – was that the next generation getting ready to leave home and go out on their own, the Gen-X’ers, weren’t reading newspapers to begin with. And as they are going out into the world they are staying with what they know, the internet.
Growing up with a computer in front of them, they learned how to scan across the web for the information that they are most interested in. And this digital delivery is constantly updated, showing the latest available information on the topic. Not to mention the ability to seek out many different hosts that publish on the favored topic.
By and large, news delivery businesses are supported by the sales of advertising that generate the funds needed to pay for the labor, machinery, etc. needed to put out the paper or broadcast that carries the information. And the advertisers sure know where their customers are. They keep a very close watch on their effectiveness for obvious reasons. One major accounting firm that follows the advertising industry, Deloitte, recently published a listing of what are currently the most influential advertising mediums, in order of success. The top six on their list are:
- Television
- Magazines
- The Internet
- Newspapers
- Radio
- Billboards (Outdoor advertising)
Radio is plunging even faster than the newspapers, mainly due to the local stations being bought up by large national chains who then abandon the local connection that people enjoyed and substituting a bland, limited product that nobody wants to listen to. If the radio station won’t play the music they want to hear, then they just load up their pocket-sized MP3 player with a couple thousand of their favorites and listen to that instead.
But the withering of the newspapers’ influence is the one that has the greatest impact. So dominant in people’s lives for the past 150 yrs., they are now suddenly faced with a phantom readership that is disappearing before their eyes.
We’ll finish up with this latest observation tomorrow. Right now we have to get this equipment checked out. And I have to get some more coffee going. We’ll meet back in the day room later.
