Local TV news audiences fell by an average of 5-6% in the past year, depending upon the hour of the newscast. Local television ad revenue fell 22% in 2009, triple the decline the year before. One estimate puts the losses in the last two years at over 1,600 jobs, or roughly 6%.
Network TV fell 8%. Only cable news among the commercial news sectors did not suffer declining revenue last year.
Newspaper circulation dropped 10% in 2009. Ad revenue (for print and online combined) fell 26% which brings the total loss over the last three years to 43%.
Radio audiences remain stable, despite the varied choices for audio, but ad revenue still fell 22%.
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.
Online ad revenue over all fell about 5%, and revenue to news sites most likely also fared much worse. Online advertising dropped for the first time since 2002, losing about 4.6% over the same period a year ago.
Market research and investment banking firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson projects that by 2013, after the economic recovery, three elements of old media — newspapers, radio and magazines — will take in 41% less in ad revenues than they did in 2006.We estimate that the newspaper industry has lost $1.6 billion in annual reporting and editing capacity since 2000, or roughly 30%. That leaves an estimated $4.4 billion remaining. Even if the economy improves we predict more cuts in 2010.
The majority of Internet users (59%) now use some kind of social media, including Twitter, blogging and networking sites. But 79% of online news consumers say they rarely if ever have clicked on an online ad. American Life Project, finds that only about a third of Americans (35%) have a news destination online they would call a “favorite,” and even among these users only 19% said they would continue to visit if that site put up a pay wall.
J-Lab, a project that studies new media, estimates that roughly $141 million of nonprofit money has flowed into new media efforts over the last four years (not including public broadcasting). That is less than one-tenth of the losses in newspaper resources alone.
Most news organizations — new or old — are becoming niche operations, more specific in focus, brand and appeal and narrower, necessarily, in ambition.
