A new report commissioned by the FCC discovered a “surprisingly small audience for local news traffic.” How small? Less than one in five news pageviews goes to local news sources — that’s a combination of newspaper sites, local TV sites and large independent news sites in a given market — and the average user spends just 0.45% of total internet time consuming local news.
Now, the report is dicing Comscore data, which isn’t always gospel, but the numbers are consistent. It’s even worse for local news organizations that aren’t #1 or #2 in their markets — the study found the top news site, on average, registers 5 minutes/user per month. The second-place site sees 3 minutes/user. Third place, 2 minutes. Fourth, just .8 minutes.
For local TV that’s invested heavily in local news operations, this should be disturbing. With just a handful of exceptions, like KSL in Salt Lake, stations aren’t generating large-enough online audiences to make up a meaningful percentage of total revenue. To make matters worse, local weather and traffic — staples of TV coverage — are becoming ubiquitous, built into every device, every search engine and increasingly, every TV set and cable box.
What does all this mean? Mediaite’s Philip Bump takes a crack at it: “There are generally two things people care about: what everyone is talking about, and what’s happening to them. Local news is caught in the murky middle."
Read more here
