Tag: Roy Morgan

Old newshound investigates digital news

digital-media-classifieds
Image: Bob checks out Pravda on his Chinese smart phone – the go anywhere world

I think I already knew that 80% of Australians were dependent on digital news. Last week I was asked to give a talk at a business breakfast on ‘The past and future of newspapers’. It was a bit of a revelation, drawing on historical data and reflecting on my experience as a regional journalist in the early 1980s. At the time, the old technology (Linotype, lithography, telex, hand subbing) was making way for the computer revolution.

Prior to the mid-1980s, newspapers had an absolute monopoly over classified advertising. If you wanted to sell a car, employ someone, rent a house. hold a garage sale or post a death notice, the classifieds were the only option and they were not cheap.

The supremacy of what Rupert Murdoch once called ‘the rivers of gold’ started faltering, first with competition from specialist trade magazines and then from the fast-developing Internet.

Some brave journalists – call them early adopters – set out to start up their own newspapers. They worked from home and used desktop publishing. Their free newspapers offered ‘classies’ at heavily discounted prices and disrupted the business plan of media giants. The common response was to buy out the upstarts and shut them down.

Once the Internet began to gather momentum, advertisers started to find cheaper ways to sell things. Free on-line markets like Ebay further eroded the traditional profits of newspapers. The big media owners started to buy on-line businesses to compete on both levels. The resulting domination of digital media media advertising, mainly Facebook, has led, in this decade (2010-2021) in particular, to an accelerated decline in print newspapers.

For example, Rupert Murdoch’s once-dominant Herald Sun in Melbourne has come back to the pack. Last week Crikey did a bit of homework on the newspaper’s falling circulation figures (from a peak of 600,000 in 1990). Crikey discovered that the Herald-Sun had fallen to fourth place among News Corp’s Australian mastheads. It also lost its No 1 spot overall behind Nine’s The Age.

As of June 30, the Herald Sun had tumbled to 146,026 subscribers across print and digital products, according to internal figures reported to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Crikey’s Christopher Warren, who, during better times in newspapers, was president of the journalists’ union, wrote:

“The ‘Don’t read the Herald-Sun’ campaigners will be eager to claim credit for the masthead’s fall. They’ve been targeting the paper for its critical coverage of Melbourne’s 2020 lock-down.” 

This subscriber-only article prompted much comment on social media from Melbourne folk who apparently do not rate the Herald Sun. Mohamed Mohideen said on Facebook, “Most times they give it free in many places just to say they have a big circulation.

I use it for my cat litter.”

Global data and analytics company Nielsen says 80% of Australians turned to digital news and apps to stay informed in the June 2021 quarter. The total time spent peaked at 1.6 million hours on May 27, when the Victoria Government announced a seven-day lockdown. The next highest, 1.5 million hours, was on June 27, on the first day of the NSW Government lockdown.

Nielsen says the increase was primarily driven by news content consumed on mobile devices. The average daily time spent increased in June by 12%, compared to the same month in 2020. These figures, drawn from a Nielsen press release, are as much as the company is prepared to share. Because of a stalemate with IAB Australia, the trade association controlling on-line advertising, Nielsen stopped making the data public in January and has so far not resumed.

Nevertheless, the Internet being what it is, someone posted the June 2021 ratings on Twitter.

The June data showed ABC on-line in No 1 position with 12.83 ‘unique’ viewers, followed by news.com.au (11.72m), Nine (10.63m), 7News (9.45m) and The Guardian (6.71m) in fifth spot.

News Corp decided back in late 2017 to opt out of Australia’s system of measuring daily circulation, as reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Since then, media analysts and commentators have had to rely on emerging surveys by data companies including Nielsen and Roy Morgan.

Media and marketing website Mumbrella commented that by withdrawing from the Audited Media Association of Australia, News dealt a near fatal blow to the future of print circulation audits in Australia.

News Corp said at the time advertisers should now look to Enhanced Media Metrics Australia (EMMA), which was created by the newspaper industry in 2013 to promote readership numbers, rather than circulation, as the key metric.

Eight years later, (EMMA) was ditched in favour of Roy Morgan’s ‘Total News’ metric.

The first release of Total News readership figures produced by Roy Morgan show that cross platform news reached 97% of the population aged 14+ (20.4 million) in the year to June 30, 2021.
Print (and digital) news saw a 6% increase, compared to the same period last year, now reaching 14.1 million people aged 14+.
Of the 20.4m readers, 1.3 million read newspaper print editions only; 12.8m consumed digital and print and 6.3m digital only.

When you read about the inevitable shift to digital media, it is hard to know how media owners will convince people to pay for it. According to the Australian National University’s Digital News Report 2021, the percentage of people paying for on-line news (13%) has changed little since 2020.  Of the non-payers, only 12% say they are likely to pay in the next 12 months. Only a third of Australians are aware that news outlets are less profitable than a decade ago or are concerned about it.

News Corp’s decision in 2020 to rationalise 112 regional titles across Australian has had ongoing ramifications. According to The Guardian, 20 of the regional papers owned by News Corp have been absorbed into the on-line editions of News Corp’s subscriber-only metropolitan newspapers.

Other cost-cutting measures include a decision to no longer deliver print newspapers to far flung regional Queensland (affecting Mt Isa, Longreach, Charters Towers, Emerald and towns in the State’s south-west).

PwC’s Entertainment and Media Outlook Report 2021 says that even before the pandemic, all major publishers were looking towards a predominantly digital news future to compensate for the loss of print circulation and print advertising revenue. Printed circulation revenue dropped by 6.7% in 2020 to A$735 million, and print advertising revenue fell 24% to $882 million.

As the report observed: “All major publishers leaned into rapid transformation and a shift to a a digital world.”

So here’s this week’s homework: are you a NO (newspaper only), a NAD (newspaper and digital) or a DO (digital only). Perhaps you may even be an NRN (never read newspapers). Do tell.

Here’s a few insights into the habits of digital newspaper readers, 54% of whom consume news over breakfast or on the daily commute:

  • 45% use mobile phones as the main device for reading news;
  • 27% of newspaper readers typically read 7+ issues per week;
  • 40% of newspaper readers spend 30 minutes or more reading;
  • 60% spend less than half an hour reading;
  • 10% actually pay for their on-line subscription;
  • 56% of Gen Z (aged 6-24) get their news from social media.

Alarmingly (well, I was alarmed), 10% of people over 75 get their news from social media. Let’s hope it’s not one of those obscure conspiracy-based outlets.

*I wrote about left handers a few weeks back. If you were trying to find the left handed guitar website, here it is: https://leftyfretz.com/

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Obama’s last Christmas card

Barack-Obama-family
Image: White House

The first you know it’s getting close is when you receive the first Christmas card. Like many of you, though, we’ve been receiving fewer cards each year as friends and family switch to email and social media.

But it was so nice of Barack, Michelle and the girls to remember us! #dontleave

We are organising a ‘Secret Santa’ gift-giving ritual. This means if there are 10 people coming for Christmas dinner; each person buys one gift to an agreed value. The Secret Santa organiser assigns shopping tasks – “You can buy a gift for Auntie Val. I heard her grumbling last week that her pruning shears have had it.”

So rather than 10 people each spending about $599 (the average Christmas gift spend, according to a Commonwealth Bank survey), you each spend $50 and there’s a good chance the person receiving the Secret Santa gift will get something they actually want/need.

An international survey by ING Bank conducted in October found that 82% of Europeans received one or more gifts in 2015. One in seven (15%) were given something they didn’t appreciate, didn’t like or couldn’t use. The proportions were only slightly different in the US and Australia. Of the 15% who admitted to receiving unwanted presents, more than half kept them anyway. Others gave them to someone else (25%), sold them (14%) or tried to return them to the store (11%).

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has estimated that $798 million of the $8.8 billion spent on Christmas loot goes on unwanted gifts.

There are three basic options if you want to rein in your Christmas gift spending. The family could agree to (a) not buy gifts at all (b) organise Secret Santa or (c) donate money to organisations like World Vision or Oxfam; the latter uses the money to buy practical items for poor African villages. The gift recipient receives a certificate, which says something like, Congratulations (name), you have bought a goat for a village in Sudan. The certificate goes on to explain what a goat can mean for a poor African village. You can pin the certificate to your office noticeboard and feel virtuous for a whole year. (Or as Little Brother says, you could go to a country that doesn’t celebrate Christmas and give the whole circus a swerve.)

Some children get $200 cash and more!

The Australian and Securities Commission (ASIC) website Moneysmart, which aims to educate consumers, compiled an Infographic (see fact sheet link which shows how much money Australians spend on Christmas gifts. The average spent on gifts ranges from $401 (South Australia) to $548 (NSW). Sixty percent used savings when they went shopping, 20% used a credit card, 10% borrowed money from family and friends or used a bonus/tax refund and 10% used lay-by. Of those who used a credit card to pay for Christmas, 80% paid it off within three months.

Nine out of 10 children received some cash as Christmas presents with 20% receiving between $100 and $200 and 22% more than $200! Boys spent the cash on console games (45%), computer games (24%), and other games (22%), put the cash toward saving for a big item (31%) or banked it (43%). Girls spend the cash on clothes (40%), music (22%) and going out (20%), though 29% put the money towards saving for a big item and 45% put the cash in the bank.

Australians will spend all-up around $48.1 billion in the six weeks leading up to Christmas, with this weekend and December 23 and 24 identified as the bonanza shopping days. This massive spend includes $19 billion on food (we all have to eat) and $2.8 billion on on-line shopping. The Retailers Association of Australia and Roy Morgan Research say Victoria will show the biggest increase in spending ($11.6 billion, up 4.6% year on year followed by Queensland ($9.5 billion, up 4.2%).

And if you’re wondering on Christmas Day how Little Johnny could afford to give Dad the boxed set of Game of Thrones, ARA’s research shows that shoplifting will cost retailers $1.4 billion over the six-week period.

Of course buying gifts is only one part of it – then you have to buy wrapping paper and either wrap presents or pay a professional to do it for you. Australian Ethical and Clean up Australia provide some tips for people who feel bad about the 50,000 trees that get pulped every year to make your Christmas gifts look appropriately festive.

Australians use more than 8,000 tonnes of wrapping paper each year and, as Clean Up Australia chairman Ian Kiernan points out, foil sheets are hard to recycle. His suggestions for a sustainable Christmas include:

  • Rather than buying someone a physical gift like a CD, consider buying them a service, like a singing lesson;
  • Buy yourself a real Christmas tree – they smell fresh, last well, and are biodegradable through your green waste (they can also be planted out);
  • Cut back on gift wrapping, resize large cards to make gift tags, get creative with newspaper or magazines for wrapping presents and recycle the wrapping that you can’t use anymore.

“It’s not over till it’s over and you throw away the tree” (LWIII)

There is an unhappy trend to brand someone trying to moderate spending at Christmas as a Scrooge or a Grinch. The inference is we are spoiling the festive season by questioning excessive consumption.

And then there are Christmas cards, which come in ever-diminishing numbers, despite assurances that the market is doing better than ever.

The Greeting Cards Association of Australia says Australians spend $500 million on greetings cards and ours is the world’s third largest market per capita.

In the US, Christmas cards represent about 25% of the $6.5 billion greeting card market, where sales are steady, although profits are declining. Marketing expert Brandon Gaille expects global sales to keep declining as multiple issues confront the industry, including rising postal rates and competition from DIY cards and low-cost e-cards.

The Obama family sent out their last Christmas card this week, which created a sentimental outpouring around the hashtag #dontleave.

The cards are sent only to friends, supporters, White House staff and the media (which explains the hurriedly scanned copies on Twitter, Facebook and just about any traditional media outlet you can name).

The White House can afford to send out at least one million* cards featuring the Obama family’s last hoorah. Since 1960 the incumbent President’s political party has paid for this indulgence.

Back home, listeners told 720 ABC Perth the cost of postage is the overwhelming reason people are resorting to emails, texts and social media messages. I can vouch for this, having spent $70 at Australia Post sending a few calendars overseas and buying a dozen Christmas cards and stamps for friends who don’t do email.

Even though you get a 35c discount when buying card-only stamps, the high cost of postage is pushing more people to compose annual “e-letters” (complete with happy snaps).

But as one ABC Perth listener lamented, “You can’t really put an email on the mantlepiece, can you?”

*Ronald Reagan set the one million White House Christmas card benchmark in 1983 but was upstaged in 2009 by George W Bush Jnr (1.5 million).