Yesterday the FCC issued a report saying that, despite that Internet thing with all those “websites,” there’s less news being created at the local level. But you already knew that, right? (The report was also supposed to give recommendations for righting the trend, but it didn’t really.)
So just how bad is it? Let’s take a look at some of the numbers contained in that 470-plus-page—1.8 inches-thick—study on shrinkage.
“It has been tempting to think that Americans are paying less for content.”
But in 2003, people spent on average $740 a year to consume media and information—on cable and Internet service bills, for print, and on their mobile packages. In 2008, that went up to $882. Most of the increase comes from paying more for TV and radio—about $130 more, on average—as well as some from rising spending on cell phones. So it’s the mobile service providers, cable companies and Internet-providing cable companies who are getting the largest portion of the money for content.
Newspaper advertising revenue in 2005: $48,435 million.
In 2010? $25,838 million.
The good news: Between 2005 and 2009, newspapers’ online traffic went from 1.6 billion page views a month to 3 billion.
Yes, people are going online more to access their news instead of whatever those flimsy, flappy things were. And what does this mean? Ads! Newspapers made $716 million more from online ads over those four years; local TV stations’ online ad revenue went up between 2008 and 2009 too, even though most ads now appear in search engine results.
The bad: But ad rates for primetime broadcast news and larger market newspapers pay about seven times as much as an online ad.
What does this mean? $716 million don’t make up for the $22.5 billion print ad revenue drop. Which means, budget cuts.
13,400 newspaper newsroom jobs were lost in the past four years.
And over 60 percent of local TV newsroom staffs were fired.
And half of some of the “hottest start-ups” make less than $50K in annual revenue.
They aren’t making bubkis. The report points out that ad rates for primetime broadcast news and larger market newspapers pay about seven times as much as an online ad. For bloggers with 100,000 pageviews on their sites, seven times less money for an ad is the difference between a hobby and a job. (But that’s not what Patch.com is complaining about.)
“The bundle is broken.”
The thing about the Internet is that instead of buying the entire paper for that one story about your friend’s kid doing something almost interesting and therefore effectively paying the newspaper for the services of that reporter as well as for all the other reporters writing about important topics, you can now go online and get that single story and not really pay anyone.
An Ohio hospital paid local stations $100,000+ to air stories that benefited them.
For a small number of TV stations, the lack of money has meant that they’ve actually let advertisers dictate content. In addition to that Ohio TV station, the report documents a Wisconsin TV station that allowed a local hospital to pick two health stories a week in return for their advertising and a Florida morning show that solicited $2,500 from guests. Yes, this is only a few stations, but as the director of the Pew Project on Excellence in Journalism Tom Rosenstiel said, “The evidence we’ve seen suggests that this is much more widespread than a few years ago.” Burn.