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Media trends digest – 2006

International trends update (11 Dec)
Here are some international highlights from the Benton news service.

Newspaper future is hyper-local?
Gannett's newspapers are redirecting their newsrooms to focus on the Web first, paper second. Papers are slashing national and foreign coverage and beefing up "hyper-local," street-by-street news. They are creating reader-searchable databases on traffic flows and school class sizes. Web sites are fed with reader-generated content, such as pictures of their kids with Santa. In short, Gannett -- at its 90 papers, including USA Today -- is trying everything it can think of to create Web sites that will attract more readers.
Washington Post story

Audience drives newspaper bias -- study
Most people expect spin from politicians. When they perceive partisan slant in the news itself, they typically interpret it as evidence of underlying bias by reporters or media owners. But one of the most interesting things coming out of research on the economics of the media industry has been the notion that media slant may simply reflect business rather than politics. New research by two University of Chicago economists, Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M Shapiro, entitled What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From US Daily Newspapers compiles some compelling and altogether unusual data to answer the question. Papers like The Washington Times or The Deseret Morning News of Salt Lake City used Republican phrases while papers like The San Francisco Chronicle and The Boston Globe used Democratic ones. But more important, once the authors had this measure, they showed that the main driver of any slant was the newspaper’s audience, not bias by the newspaper’s owner. A comparison of circulation data (per capita) to the ratio of Republican to Democratic campaign contributions by ZIP code showed that circulation was strongly related to whether the newspaper matched the readers’ own ideology. Their measure indicates that The Los Angeles Times, for example, is a liberal paper. Its circulation suffers in Southern California ZIP codes where donations to Republicans are especially high. The authors calculated the ideal partisan slant for each paper, if all it cared about was getting readers, and they found that it looked almost precisely like the one for the actual newspaper. As Dr Shapiro put it in an interview, “The data suggest that newspapers are targeting their political slant to their customers’ demand and choosing the amount of slant that will maximize their sales.”
Full NY Times story; Study at Nber.org

Local TV still main news source
Local TV is the No. 1 source of news and information among U.S. television viewers, according to Frank N Magid Associates' findings in a national survey. The study, designed to learn how, how often and why people use an assortment of media platforms, was co-authored by Magid's director of strategic analysis Bryn Burns and senior consultant Laura Clark. They sought information that could help the stations that are Magid TV clients make decisions on how to position themselves in what they call "today's multiscreen world." Many of the findings contrast with some new-technology efforts undertaken by stations. For example, new media offerings have yet to establish their popularity. Streaming video stories, blogs and podcasts aren't luring many people to stations' Web sites, according to the study. Up-to-date text stories are. In addition, a significant number of people are interested in going to a station's Web site to check out a story they saw on a local newscast.
Full TV Week story
(requires free registration)

Online ties as strong as real ones
For many people, membership to virtual communities can be just as important as real-world social ties, according to a new study. An estimated 43 percent of Americans who belong to online communities say they feel just as strongly about their virtual worlds as their real-world counterparts, according to the USC Annenberg Digital Future Project, which released findings Wednesday of its sixth-annual report examining the Web's impact on society. The findings seem to be in accordance with the ease of meeting new friends online. According to people polled by researchers at the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School, they met an average of 1.6 new friends per year in real-world settings with whom they originally met online. Those surveyed also met an average of 4.65 friends who remained virtual pals only. In addition, more than 40 percent of Internet users said that the Web helps them stay in touch with more friends and family.
Full News.com.com report; Digital Center study

Sit & watch fading out
The rise of high-speed Internet and the explosion in online video content is fueling a widespread decline in the number of people watching television according to a worldwide study by Ofcom. On average around one-third of consumers with broadband access watch less television since going online the findings, which sampled a thousand people in each country, concluded. Alongside tech-savvy younger generations watching traditional TV channels on their PC or laptop, instant messaging, blogging, social networking sites such as MySpace and user generated content sites including YouTube are driving more and more to ditch old fashioned sit-and-watch viewing habits. Aided by the increased choice on-line, users are switching off the television and changing the way they consume media by tailoring what they watch to their personal tastes.
Full Reuters story; Ofcom market research page

Brit junk food ad ban may scupper revenue
Marketers and media owners are counting the cost following UK regulator Ofcom's surprise decision to end junk-food advertising to all children under 16. Under the ban, UK media owners could lose $75 million in ad revenue in 2007. Hardest-hit will be the dedicated children's channels, which will lose up to 15% of ad revenue. For all commercial broadcasters, the lost ads represent up to 0.7% of their income, according to Ofcom's own calculations. Ofcom's ruling includes a total ban on advertising foods high in fat, salt and sugar (referred to as HFSS), not only around children's programming but also in youth-oriented and adult programs which attract a lot of viewers under 16. Many of the marketers involved have voluntarily stopped targeting young children in recent years, and moved their campaigns onto youth channels such as MTV, believing they were safe in targeting teenagers.
Full AdAge article

Fairfax and Rural to merge (6 Dec)
Fairfax, owner of newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Financial Review – as well as numerous NZ holdings – is to merge with Rural Press to create a considerably larger empire.
Fairfax has been the target of much takeover speculation, with the Stokes organization and perhaps PBL/ACP seen as possible suitors. News Ltd had taken a strategic stake in the company as a ‘spoiler’ move, to effectively give it a bargaining chip at any table where a deal may be done.
However the speculation is that now, the new company called Fairfax Media will be too big to be taken over easily and is a less attractive target.
This and numerous other corporate dances have been triggered by the change to cross media ownership laws, which are to be approved early next year.
See this link for the statement & analysis from Fairfax. Rural Press web.

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