As Technology continues to make our lives easier and or entertainment/news more accessible and interactive, a very biting reality offers a chilling realisation... Print is definitely on the decline. Not great news if you work in the industry as I imagine it is a cold thought being involved in an industry that is only shrinking by the day.
But lets face it ~ digital is cool, easy to fit in your Prada purse and only getting cheaper. It's also more on demand. Even with the freak occurance of a real life 'Princess Diaries' making worldwide headlines, the royal engagement of Will and Kate offered no lift for a desperately depressed industry.
Prince Willie's proposal to 'KM' failed to boost even English national daily newspapers in November. All titles (with the exception of the Daily Mail and Financial Times) broke their already whopping six-month-low circulation records!
The executives and big wigs at most of the media powerhouses will be shaking in their italian boots. "If the impending nuptials of the worlds most favourite real life prince coupled with b-line stories such as a collapsing Irish economy result in such a lack-luster November, then why are the presses still running?!"
John Reynolds of UK's 'Media Week' reported yesterday 'According to November's Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABCs), the biggest losers during the month were the red-tops, led by Richard Desmond’s Daily Star, which was down 4.64% on October to 756,686 copies. This could be partly explained by Desmond’s decision to stop price-promoting the title?'
So what's the guts? Is it as dire as Global Warming yet? Well, The Daily Mirror fell 3.8% to 1,177,629 copies, while The Sun nudged down just 0.21% to 2,898,113 copies. Still sounds like a lot to us downunder with our big hitters topping out at 400,000 readers but lets face it, in the UK these numbers are enough to make the large ad players start pulling plugs and syphoning their well protected profits into Social Media. Surely Zuckerberg can give me a deal now that the legal battles are fought and Justin Timberlake is out of the picture... oops, that might be the hollywood version?
Then we have the big money grubbin' Daily Mail. And like a number of it's rivals, attempted to cash in on public excitement irresistable joy around the forthcoming wedding. The marketing geniuses thought by offering its readers a free Royal Doulton plate to mark the engagement they might hit similar numbers to when Charlie and Di were printed on every cookie tin in the land. But, the Mail too was down 1.34% to 2,100,855 copies. Getting off a little lighter was mid-market rival The Daily Express which fell only 0.47% to 639,690 but hey, they didn't have that much to lose anyway. They have always been the skinnier kid on the block and as such a 'Free Plate' was the last thing from their minds.
Oddly, the Independent decided not to exploit Prince William’s proposal – instead it stuck to it's tried and true 'Bad news Sells way better' policy and highlighted Ireland’s banking crisis. Turns out it had little impact. The newspaper did register a six-month low circulation of 177,636 (down 2.62% on the month) but they probably saved a fair whack on rights to cover pics of Willies grin, and why wouldn't he grin... She's way to hot for him!
Following the trend, the Daily Telegraph recorded a circulation of 652,762 (down 0.34%), while The Guardian was down 2.11% to 270,582. The Times also fell, a big 2.67% to 466,311 to be precise ~ and has now lost circulation in every consecutive month since News International began its much-heralded move to charge for online access to the Times website.
So overall in November, every English newspaper was down for the year, with The Times falling a precipitous 17.21% from November 2009. The brave little engine that could, the Pearson-owned Financial Times countered the general run of the market – its circulation of 44,699 was its second highest since June! Go you good thing!
The concern is that this trend is not just confined to the UK, its just a really good example of having something great to converse and inform the punters of, yet the decline persists? This is a forerunning trend that will definitely affect NZ and Australia, however right now NZ is already coming out of massive readership declines so it is probably not as noticeable month to month, but more relevant year to year.
Frankly, The carbon footprint of these millions and millions of paper editions distributed the planet over is not great. The digital era is here so lets embrace it. Paying for quality content online should be a given and hopefully implemented in the very near future. The big media powerhouses should move to it sooner than later. They should not moan about giving it away for free when they don't have to? How hard can it be to have the government legislate a synchronised changeover so that it is not as case of the 'last free-content man standing' having the largest audience?
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