On Tuesday night I was watching the “NBC Nightly News” with Brian Williams when he talked about the 100-year-old Christian Science Monitor getting out of the daily newspaper business and converting to a Web-only product.
He went on to say: “In plain English, the Internet and changing reader habits are killing the old newspaper business. Circulation is declining almost 1 percent every passing month.”
Aaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!
I think Brian Williams is a terrific newsman: smart, precise, personable, fair. But in this case he was relying on conventional wisdom that, while broadly shared, is bunk. He also got at least one fact wrong.
Newspapers are struggling in this recession. Isn’t every American business? And we do have the challenge of the Internet, though we’re profiting from it more than we’re hurt by it. But the newspaper business isn’t being killed. And it’s not dying. And circulation isn’t declining at 1 percent a month (or 12 percent a year).
Let’s compare newspapers to a competitor to see who’s doing well and who’s not, relatively speaking. Let’s pick, oh, television for instance.
Nationwide, daily newspaper circulation was down 4.6 percent for the six-month period ending in September, compared with the same period a year ago, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That’s less than half the rate at which Brian said it was shrinking.
The News Tribune was typical of the trend. Our circulation dropped 4.7 percent during the same six-month period. More important, however, readership of the printed paper actually increased, from 232,069 on average a year ago to 236,535 today.
And total audience also increased. Online readership (people who said they read the paper online in the previous seven days) was up 44.8 percent.
Combined readership in print and online was 380,656 over the seven days before the survey and 390,561 over the 30 days before the survey, according to the audit bureau data. This means The News Tribune reached 65 percent of its potential market over seven days and 66.7 percent of its potential market over 30 days.
How does TV compare in audience share? I tried to get Nielsen data on local television news, but no one got back to me by the end of the week. So I looked at the national figures. In 2007 the three network newscasts combined had a 30 share, meaning 30 percent of the TV sets in use were tuned to them. They’re all clustered together, so assume that each got around a 10 share. Combined they get 30 percent; by ourselves we get 65 percent of our market.
Between 2006 and 2007, when daily newspaper circulation dropped about 2.5 percent nationwide, ratings for the national TV network news dropped 6 percent (though share remained steady).
But let’s not take a snapshot or two. Let’s look at the longer term.
Over a 10-year period, from 1997 to 2007, ratings for network news dropped 34 percent and share 33 percent, November to November, according to Nielsen data.
In the same period daily newspaper readership declined a relatively modest 16.9 percent, according to Simmons Market Research Bureau and Scarborough Research.
So, here’s a news tip: If anybody’s getting killed in the 21st-century media market, it’s TV news, not newspapers.
And while audience for TV news is only a fraction of that of newspapers, and shrinking twice as fast, the value of advertising on TV is shrinking even faster.
While I watched Brian on Tuesday, it was on TiVo, where I never have to see a TV ad. I’m not alone. Research suggests digital video recorders will be in 50 percent of homes by 2010, and will be “near ubiquitous” in a few years. That means nobody will have to see TV ads in the near future.
So, Brian, don’t cry for newspapers. Watch your own back.
Dave Zeeck: 253-597-8554
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