Posted on 11/17/2005 8:01:58 PM PST by CAWats
Newspapers and TV broadcasters are reporting a particularly bad news story — for them. Their ad markets are foundering as advertisers scoot online.
"It's apparent that more consumers are spending more time online," said Charles Buchwalter, an analyst for market tracker Nielsen/NetRatings. "If you're an advertiser who's not online, you have to find a way to get there."
The trend means a sea change for TV and newspapers. It's forcing the nation's biggest newspapers to cut staff and forcing all old media to adapt to battle the Internet's new media players.
"This is the beginning of a 10- to 15-year transition for the newspaper industry," said JupiterResearch analyst Barry Parr. "The newspapers that emerge from it will definitely be shorter and have smaller circulations. And more of them will be free, with an increased focus on local news."
Standard & Poor's analyst Donald Wong expects papers to aggressively enhance print and online offerings to face the threat. But he said in a report it's "still uncertain how successful these efforts will be in the long term."
In any case, the ad shift is pummeling TV and print media.
Combined ad revenue for the ABC, CBS and NBC television networks plunged 21.5% to $2.2 billion for the third quarter vs. the year-ago period, the Broadcast Cable Financial Management Association said on Wednesday.
And the losing pace has gained steam. For the first nine months of the year, the association found an 8.3% decline.
For U.S. newspapers, average weekday circulation fell 2.6% for the six months ended Sept. 30, said the Newspaper Association of America, the deepest decline since 1991.
One reason: Young adults are turning increasingly to the Internet for news.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Holey moley that's a steep decline. The distribution system is unstable and not focused. Internet advertising has a more proscribed audience, not the shotgun approach that electronic media invented in the 1930s.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of communists.
I now get more news and info from the Internet than TV or newspapers. But when I watched TV or read the paper I would occasionally check out the ads. Online, I never check out any of the ads or click them...unless it is one of those floating ads I can't figure out how to close (or if it is a hot chick in a tight t-shirt).
Refreshing sometimes works.
And you wonder why Hugh Hewitt can charge pretty high prices for the ads on his weblog site.
It will be interesting to see how the increasing ad dollars affect some of the Bloggers whose articles are posted on FR, driving a certain level of FR readers to their blogs.
I wonder if there will be the interest/capability to determine whether conservative sites vs leftist sites will get more ad money.
ping
Since I figure ads help bring me the content I want to see, I won't block friendly ads. I will, however block pop ups, animations, misrepresentations, and other offensive material.
And if an advertiser is serving from an offensive site, it might inadvertantly get blocked as well.
By the way - I also hit the clicker when a cable channel hits me with pop up ads.
There used to be a saying, "Better dead than Red".
Looks like some of the more lefty newspapers in this country are soon going to be unread, Red AND dead.
Leni
And did you know the WSJ, the paper with the most conservative editorial page in the U.S., recently started a Saturday edition?
Leni
If you don't have a firewall running already, I recommend Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro (www.agnitum.com). If you remember AtGuard from the Win98/2000 days, Outpost does it all and more. It will block any sort of content and/or ad string based on preset rules or prompt you to create rules as it encounters junk.
I use Netscape 7.2 (ver 8 is a train wreck) and Outpost and am rock solid.
PS - check out the Blockpost extension for Outpost also! :)
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the internet and everything to do with the CRAP they put on those three networks.
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