Thursday, 1 October 2015

NDM News case study: Audience and Institution

What are the key statistics relating to the influence of new and digital media?


  • 95% of Adults in the UK say they follow the news
  • 75% of UK adults say they use TV as a source of news
  • 41% of people this year use any internet or apps for news year compared to just under 32%
  • In 2013, 44% of the 16-34 age group used the internet or apps for news and now it has increased  to 60% in 2014
  • 28% of those who consume news in the UK named BBC One as the single most important news source to them

  • Since 2013 there has been an increase in the number of people stating a website/app as their most important news source (21% in 2014 vs. 14% in 2013)
  • Almost half (45%) of 16-24's say their most important news source is a website/app
  • Each adult watches an average of 115 hours of national and international news on television in 2013. The majority of this (64%) was on BBC One or BBC Two and a further 12% on the BBC News channel. However, 16-24 year old's consumed only 27 hours of news on television in the same period, compared to 196 hours for those aged 55 and over.

  • UK politics and current affairs, and worldwide current affairs are seen to have societal importance by half (49%) of UK adults, crime by 48% and weather by 45%.
  • Among the 16-24's, specific news categories such as crime, sports, technology and science/environment fall into the top ten topics, while the over-55's are more likely to nominate, general world news and UK and regional current affairs.

  • 58% of UK adults say they follow the news to find out “what’s going on in the world”
  • 56% say they want to know “what’s going on across the UK” 
  • 49% claim they want to know “what’s going on in my local area” 
  • 46% would like to know “what’s going on in respective nations” 
  • 42% say “because I feel it’s important to keep informed about certain issues” 


Come up with an example of an institution that has benefited from the changes new and digital media has brought to the news industry. Explain how new technology has helped the institution and try to find statistics or financial figures that support your point.



Technology has helped the Guardian as their on-line media operations has aided in offsetting falling print sales without paywalls and content lock-up. 

  • Guardian News & Media cited an annual loss of £30.9 million in the year to the end of March 2013, which had fallen by 30 percent from last year’s loss, “as growing digital revenues helped offset the continuing decline in income from print operations.”
  • Guardian News & Media, “which now derives just over 28% of total revenues from on-line operations,” boosted its digital revenues “by 28.9% from £43.4 million to £55.9 million in the 12-month period, helping the publisher to slightly increase total revenues year on year to £196.3 million.
  • Guardian iPad subscribers alone rose from 17,000 to 22,951
  • Guardian News & Media’s digital display and sponsorship revenues rose by 39 percent year-over-year, online recruitment revenues rose by one third, and subscription/e-commerce revenues increased by 15 percent
  • Guardian Media Group itself turned around a £75.6 million ($114.13 million) loss for 2012 into profits before tax of £22.7 million ($34.27 million) for 2013.

Find an example of an institution that has suffered as a result of the changes new and digital media has brought to the news industry. In what way has it had a negative impact? Again, try and find actual statistics or financial figures to explain your point


Due to journalism decreasing from traditional media outlets, Rupert Murdoch was forced to apply a paywall of £1 in order to read The Sun. 

  • From June 2010 Rupert Murdoch has decided that he cannot sustain the losses of £57 million a year from his UK papers, and is putting up a paywall so that online editions of The Times and Sunday Times will cost the same as the print edition - £1 a day
  • The paywall experiment recieved just 131,000 subscribers after two years




Who has benefited most from the changes new and digital media have had on the news industry - audiences or institutions?


Due to the changes made by new and digital media in the news industry, there have been many benefits on the audience and the industries.

The audience have benefited as they have a greater variety on the e-media. They can get immediate live news 24/7 through social networking sites such as twitter that would upload news tweets. The audience also have the possibility of using news apps to get the news 24/7. On the go news also gives the audience the chance to watch the news if they have missed the 6 o'clock news for example. Also, if one is use to reading the news, now there is the possibility of reading the news on-line for free for instance the Daily Mail. 

On the other hand, institutions have also benefited from the changes new and digital media have had on the news industry. Some institutions have taken advantage of this new change and have made on-line news so that they can reach the audience more and gain more popularity. The Guardian took this initiative and increased the profit that they use to receive.

Even though the audience can read news on-line some sites such as The Sun have a payroll of £! which is a disadvantage to the audience. On the other hand, newspapers suffer disproportionately as they are still running with costly and unwieldy ‘old media’ print distribution. There are approximately 55,000 shops and outlets with a delivery of heavy newspapers early every morning. In a recent radio discussion on the BBC Media Show newspaper editors admitted that no one knows if there will be print newspapers in 10 years time. Possibly everybody will be reading their newspaper on a Kindle, mobile phone or iPad.

To conclude, there seems to be more advantages for the audience then for institutions so to a certain degree, the audience have benefited the most from the changes new and digital media have had on the news industry.
 

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