Media Map

An interactive media map by state here.

Half Of Online Americans Listen To Internet Radio

For the first time, more than half (53%) of online Americans are listening to Internet radio, according to new data released this week by Edison Research. Some 27% are listening to streaming audio from live radio stations, both local and outside, while 18% are listening to on-demand services, which involve paying a subscription for access to music libraries. Time spent listening to online radio is clearly increasing, with 67% of Internet radio listeners saying they are listening to the medium more than they were a year ago, and 32% saying they are listening “a lot” more.

Read more at Media Post

How ‘Cord Never’ Generation Poses Sales Drag for Pay TV

A generation of technology-savvy, budget-conscious consumers who are taking advantage of the availability of high-speed Internet connections and the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, lower-cost TVs and other gadgets that make it easy to consume downloadable shows in a snap.

The shift in viewing habits is putting pressure on cable, satellite and phone companies by pinching subscriber numbers, which may have a knock-on effect on revenue growth. The impact on the $80 billion pay-TV industry is already being felt, with 2013 on pace to be the first year ever that total U.S. pay-TV subscriptions will decline, falling to 100.8 million from 100.9 million last year, according to researcher IHS.

Read more at Bloomberg

Court: Facebook ‘Like’ Is Protected By the First Amendment

“Liking” something on Facebook is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday, reviving a closely watched case over the extent to which the Constitution shields what we do online. In doing so, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a former deputy sheriff in Hampton, Va., who said he was sacked for “liking” the Facebook page of a man running against his boss for city sheriff.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

Google may kiss 'cookies' goodbye

Google is developing an anonymous identifier for advertising, or AdID, that would replace third-party cookies as the way advertisers track people's Internet browsing activity for marketing purposes, according to a person familiar with the plan.

Read more at USA Today

Video games improve cognitive ability in the elderly

The improvement in multi-tasking was so great that the amount of cognitive effort required by the oldies after their training was no more than if they were in their 20s and playing the game for the first time. Furthermore, the changes seemed to last for some time. After a six-month break from playing, the older participants were still nimble-minded.

Read more at the Economist

Internet users whinge about passwords but are none too keen on the alternatives

Some of the new ideas involve biometric data—in theory unique to each user. Apple may have a fingerprint reader in its latest iPhone, which is due to go on sale later this month. On September 3rd Bionym, a Canadian firm, launched Nymi, a bracelet which detects the wearer’s heartbeat. The Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology in Tokyo has developed a chair which detects—with 99% accuracy—the unique shape of a user’s bottom.

One answer is to supplement passwords (and gadgets) with something else.. A British start-up called PixelPin asks users to select some objects, in a preset order, from an image they have uploaded. Barclays, a bank, sets multiple-choice questions which require detailed knowledge of the customers’ past life and times.

Read more at the Economist

A Quest to Save AM Before It’s Lost in the Static

In 1978.. half of all radio listening was on the AM dial. By 2011 AM listenership had fallen to 15 percent, or an average of 3.1 million people, according to a survey by Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a private investment firm. While the number of FM listeners has declined, too, they still averaged 18 million in 2011.

Although five of the top 10 radio stations in the country, as measured by advertising dollars, are AM — among them WCBS in New York and KFI in Los Angeles — the wealth drops rapidly after that.

Read more at the New York Times

How the News Got Less Mean

Researchers are discovering that people want to create positive images of themselves online by sharing upbeat stories. And with more people turning to Facebook and Twitter to find out what’s happening in the world, news stories may need to cheer up in order to court an audience. If social is the future of media, then optimistic stories might be media’s future.

Read more here

Media companies get cash from digital sources is at last repairing some of the damage

According to eMarketer, a research firm, this year Americans will spend more time online or using computerised media than watching television. “All-access” services, such as Netflix (for film and TV) or Spotify (for music), which give unlimited content on mobile devices for a monthly fee, are prompting people to spend more on digital products.

After years of wreaking havoc, the internet is helping media companies to grow. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), a professional-services firm, reckons that revenues for online media and entertainment will increase by around 13% a year for the next five years.

The most obvious change in the past few years is the decline of “physical” products, such as CDs, DVDs and print newspapers. In 2008 nearly nine-tenths of consumer cash went on them; by 2017 it will be a little over half, with digital grabbing the rest.

Read more at The Economist

Gaps between how journalism educators and journalists view j-schools

More than 80 percent of educators say a journalism degree is extremely important when it comes to learning news gathering skills, compared to 25 percent of media professionals. One in five media professionals finds a degree in the discipline is not at all important or only slightly important in learning news gathering (according to a new Poynter study).

Read more at Inside Higher Ed

3 takes on why bookstores are dead

Management consultant Joseph Esposito writes, “With bookstores collapsing everywhere, the print business collapses along with it.” As bookstores close, Esposito argues, readers have fewer places to discover print books. Instead, he says, they learn about titles online — through Twitter, Goodreads, or Amazon pages. When it comes time to order the book, they have two options: A cheaper digital version or a more expensive print version. “Why pay for print when you can get the digital edition immediately at a lower price? The advantage of the physical bookstore — the immediate availability of inventory — is not at play here.”

Read more at GigaOm

Radio Ad Revs Flat, Digital Ads Rise

Radio advertising revenues were unchanged in the second quarter of 2013 compared to the year before, according to the latest figures from the Radio Advertising Bureau, which tallied total revenue at $4.66 billion. As in previous quarters, the main bright spot for radio was digital advertising, which saw a 16% year-over-year increase, to $222 million.

Read more here

Study finds more than a quarter of journalism grads wish they’d chosen another career

"About 28 percent of journalism grads wish they’d chosen another field, the annual survey of grads by the University of Georgia’s Grady College says." More at Poynter

The same study also showed "The job market for journalism and mass communication graduates showed signs of continued improvement in 2012 and 2013, suggesting that the worst in terms of the market is in the past."  Read more from the school here

‘The Daily Show’ on Jeff Bezos and the newspaper industry

John Oliver of “The Daily Show” explains how “there are now more people currently buying newspapers than people buying newspapers.”

Facebook: Here's How Your News Feed Works

The average user’s News Feed has around 1,500 possible stories filtered through per day, according to Lars Backstrom, engineering manager for Facebook’s News Feed ranking. But only 20% of them actually make your feed. So how does Facebook determine which 20% you see?

Scores are determined using a number of factors, such as the relationship you have with the user who posted it, the number of comments, the number of shares, and the number of likes that the story has accumulated.

A change in the ranking process now enables older stories (stories that may have been posted earlier in the day but the user never actually scrolled through) to join the “new” stories at the top of your feed.

Read more at ABC News

Study Finds Craigslist Took $5 Billion From Newspapers

A new study by two business school professors examined the issue and concluded that, indeed, Craigslist took a giant bite out of newspapers’ revenues — some $5 billion between the years 2000 and 2007. And that’s not even looking at the Times, the Wall Street Journal or USA Today, which the authors left out in order to have a more homogeneous sample.

Read more at Forbes

More Print News Subscribers Plan To Cancel Subs, Uptick In Mobile Consumption

The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute’s “2013 Q1 Research Report,” revealed that 12.7% of print subscribers plan to cancel their subscriptions in 2013.

On the positive side, the decline in print subscriptions is clearly correlated with increasing consumption of news via digital channels, with a special emphasis on mobile.

Read more at Media Post

British newspapers are becoming more American

Subscriptions online and in print are not enough to make up for print advertising losses. Newspaper advertising this year will be an estimated £2.1 billion ($3.2 billion), around half its 2005 level. Mr Murdoch’s Times loses money in spite of its paywall. Regional newspapers, more reliant on classifieds, are in worse shape. In January there were 1,054 regional titles, down around 18% since 2008.

Read more at The Economist

The Social Media Bubble Is Quietly Deflating

Social media companies drew only 2 percent of the venture capital headed to Internet-based enterprises last quarter" while "Big data and cloud companies" appear to be the hot plays now in Silicon Valley.

Read more at Business Week.