How digital media poses a threat to print and broadcast
Millennials don’t watch much television. They get their news in real time from social media and news websites.
In the West, the carnage has begun. Newspapers are going bust – and digital. The New York Times has retrenched print journalists and beefed up its digital newsroom.
Broadcast television could be the next victim. Millennials don’t watch much television. They get their news in real time from social media and news websites.
In India, the figures for news television are stark. The first to feel the pinch is English news. The six leading English news channels have an average combined weekly viewership of just 20 lakh.
That’s barely 1 per cent of the reach of Hindi news channels. English news channels cater largely to the urban elite who have access to the latest digital technology. They are first movers from broadcast television news to digital-sourced news.
We are fast approaching an era when television will serve as a secondary medium of record – newspapers have already been reduced to playing that role – while digital platforms become the primary source of news and entertainment.
In India, digital advertising is growing exponentially, albeit from a low base. In 2007, total digital advertising amounted to a paltry Rs 400 crore. By 2016, digital advertising had grown 19x to Rs7,700 crore.
In 2021, according to statista.com, digital media spend will rise a further 4x to Rs 29,500 crore – equal to the amount spent today on television advertising.
The problem news websites in the West face is the dominance of Google and Facebook.
The two behemoths swallow 66 per cent of all digital advertising, leaving online-only news portals and the digital arms of newspapers and broadcasters to fight over the crumbs.
To overcome this, newspapers with strong digital content have built full or partial pay firewalls. Rupert Murdoch’s The Times and The Sunday Times in Britain were among the first to erect pay firewalls on their digital properties. Several others have followed.
In the United States The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have built successful digital subscriber models. NYT now has more paid digital-only subscribers (2.50 million) than paid print subscribers.
Its digital advertising revenue in the quarter ending September 30, 2017 rose 47 per cent to $86 million, dwarfing the $64 million it received in print advertising in the same quarter, a decline of 20 per cent over the previous quarter.
In India, pay walls and digital subscribers haven’t yet got off the ground. Internet users have so much free content that digital subscriptions are hard to come by. Some non-news publications, though, like Swarajya and Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), have built robust digital pay models. That is the future of digital publishing – a revenue mix of paid subscriptions and advertising.
Beyond economics, the relative decline of broadcasting and print media has social and political implications. News often breaks first on digital platforms. Television picks it up hours later and newspapers run with it the next day. That is why print newspapers appear dated: news is a highly perishable commodity.
For the public, the rapid move to digital is a Godsend. They can react to news in realtime since digital platforms provide a two-way conversation. Editors and writers are regularly called out by readers, making them more accountable. The editorial ivory tower has come tumbling down to earth.
Readers and viewers, for long simply consumers of news and entertainment, can now be producers themselves. YouTube, for example, where 24,000 minutes of new videos are uploaded every minute, has created an entire universe of online entrepreneurs – from comedians and cooks to tipsters on travel and fashion.
Two recent veteran journalists-turned-entrepreneurs have entirely bypassed television and print media to launch their products digitally. Shekhar Gupta, the former editor of The Indian Express, uses Twitter and Facebook among other platforms to disseminate his start-up, The Print.
Barkha Dutt, the former NDTV anchor, uses Periscope, Facebook and Twitter to reach a digital audience for her event-and-content products, MoJo and WeTheWomen.
Both journalists have had long experience in print and television, but are using digital media tactically: it’s cheaper and though it currently lacks the bandwith of print and broadcast, it’s the most practical way to get started and create a buzz. Television and print will follow as add-ons, not primary drivers.
Lagging behind
Politicians generally remain laggards in the digital age. Congress president Rahul Gandhi has begun to use digital media more effectively since he rejigged his social media team.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was an early digital convert. Today he makes up for not holding regular press conference by using digital media actively. He is now the most followed Indian on Twitter (38.80 million), though his tweets lack a personal touch.
The biggest problem in digital media is online abuse and fake news. Websites are often created to generate fabricated news which, algorithmically, appears on Facebook or Google, the two largest news aggregators.
Both have recently put special software in place to weed out fake news, but with limited success. Bereft of an editorial filter, the tsunami of text and video overwhelms news aggregators.
Despite its drawbacks, digital media is the future. That doesn’t mean the end of print or broadcast media as we know it. Just as television didn’t kill radio in America in the 1960s (radio is booming), digital won’t kill television and print.
It will, however, replace them as the first and principal source of news and entertainment. Hotstar, Netflix and Amazon Prime are the tip of the digital iceberg.
The digital era will also reinforce the role of writers and content-makers. In a recent interview with Midday, Chris Brancato, creator of Narcos, said that in the US television and film industry, content is king: “The only person who has any say on the development (of a series) is the writer. He assumes various positions; ones that only a director or producer would have in another country.
When digital content in India too becomes king, writers will finally have the last word.