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Annual report: local media audience in rapid decline

By Steve Safran ⋅ March 15, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

The annual Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism’s “State of the News Media” report is out, and it is a compendium of discouragement for anyone tied to the media. Here are just some of the top lines:

  • Local TV news audiences fell by an average of 5-6% in the past year, depending upon the hour of the newscast. Ad revenue declines were much worse, seeing a drop of 27%.
  • Newspaper circulation dropped 10% in 2009. Ad revenue (for print and online combined) fell 26%.
  • Newsstand sales of magazines dropped 9%, having already dropped 11% a year earlier. Ad page sales in magazines dropped by 26% over a year earlier.
  • Radio audiences remain stable, despite the varied choices for audio, but ad revenue still fell 18%.
  • Online advertising dropped for the first time since 2002, losing about 4.6% over the same period a year ago.
  • More with less: “In local TV news, PEJ estimated that about 450 jobs were lost at stations in 2009, on top of 1,200 jobs lost in 2008. Despite staff reductions, the average amount of news increased to 4.6 hours, from 4.1 hours the previous year.”

    • As always, this is a rich, dense report we encourage you to read in full.

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    Comments for “Annual report: local media audience in rapid decline”

    • The Unknown Known
      The reason viewing time INCREASED with fewer employees is pretty simple.

      Greater redistribution, meaning more outlets via placement of new news-driven entertainment on DTV subchannels, satellite placement on other BROADCAST channels such as co-branded news from a parent station and of course, straegic alignments with radio and print news sources.

      Much like this AGGREGATION everybody complains about. It does work well in many cases.

      I tend to wonder why there is all this TRENCH WARFARE when it KILLS journalism in the end by making it look like a circus. All GADGETS and NO VISION. It's looks like WALL STREET.

      I also recall hearing a lot of anti-newspaper talk like it was the Kaiser...

      "Oh, dear...we sunk their BATTLESHIP! When are the rest of the Jerries going to die, heh heh"?

      It all sounds beastly, this Kill 'Em All mentality. Some people should wash their undies more often.

      Journalism isn't here to eat itself, it's here to evolve and survive.

      WHY hasn't Lost Remote offered a bandaid for the battered and a chair for the weary to sit down and eventually retire, if that is their fate?

      I do hope the P/I site got their game though as it was not that great compared to the Times and needed help. I haven't read either in a long time though. If something really important happens, NWCN has it or a Seattle public station has it on PBS. OVER AND OVER.

      Rinse and repeat, show Oprah, locally produced and syndicated programs so as not to burn out viewers like CNN-HN figured out.

      Do I think HN is an excuse for car chases and sensationalism?

      Yep. It's fun though if you are dining and no sports are on the TV. Being able to klll the captioning in MUTE would be keen though. That is so Network 23 it slays.
    • The Unknown Known
      To clarify: "satellite placement" is NOT like Satcom, it's the old sense of channel X feeds channel Y content. In YE OLDEN DAYS this would mean duplication of signal in outlying towns but of courae now many companies havemore than one station in a given town, often weakened and a news brand will be given while the normal programming chores continue (under the new owner's guidance).

      You knew that.
    • The Unknown Known
      FYI News is not this media THING.

      Media are items that a MEDIUM delivers.

      Reruns of The Rockford Files as the program sources they are are MEDIA.

      EVERYTHING IS MEDIA.

      Saying News Media isn't much of a distintion. If Lost Remote siad they were going to publish in German only it would be news. News is information communications with the intent of broad distribution.

      Warum wenn ich ein Beruhigungsmittel bin, sind Sie folgend?
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