Television news is very popular and doesn’t involve reading, gives a quick summary of the main event in a day and is updated during the day. These are all features that a newspaper cannot offer. In the last five years we have also seen the introduction of digital and interactive television and 24 hour news programmes. All these things are major competitors for newspaper owners and editors.
The development of the Internet also improved the availability of news instantly. You can now dial up to the Internet and find out as much information as you want with different viewpoints on events. This attracts people to the Internet because they can read a story that doesn’t have a particular slant on its story, papers are often affected by its views, and whether they are right wing or left wing can affect the way a paper reports a story.
The readership of a newspaper is very difficult to determine because of recycling in the family, reading in doctors surgeries and waiting rooms and newsagents bulk-buying papers. If one member of a family buys a paper and takes it home it is likely that other people from the family will read it. The same goes for in a waiting room, people will just pick up the papers for something to read and many more than one person will read the paper. Newsagent’s bulk buy the papers to sell but don’t necessarily sell all of the papers they buy. It is generally accepted that the readership is approximately three times the circulation of a paper.
In the last 10 years most papers have had a decline in both circulation and readership. But there are two papers that have not only sustained their place in the market but also managed to strengthen this position. The Daily Star, under the power of Andrew Hill (see above quote), and the Financial Times, under the power of Andrew Gower. The Financial Times remains a highly respected newspaper, which has defended its market well despite the expanding number of business pages on mainstream broadsheets.
This decline in British newspaper sales is often attributed to tabloid television, our information society, 24 hour news, an increase in the number of cars we own, price and online papers. Tabloid television is being more and more popular. Aimed at the largest segment of the British population, the working classes (C2, D and E’s), it focus on the lives of celebrities, has competitions and is mainly gossip, it take the popular view in society on issues. This is very similar to Rupert Murdoch’s ingredients he used for The Sun which, up to now, has been the most successful British newspaper.
The fact we live in an information society means there is lesser need for papers. 30 years ago people would buy a newspaper to find out what was happening in the world. Now they can sit at their computer screen, switch on their television or even look at their mobile phone to find out what is going on in the world. Information is much easier to get hold of than it used to be and to some people reading a newspaper may be the hard way of finding news compared to other methods within our reach today.
The availability of 24-hour news has revolutionised television news. Whereas news was on at set times and updated in hourly intervals, now news can be updated when it happens. This means that the fact that newspapers can only update their story once or twice a day puts them at a huge disadvantage. People want to know the most up-to-date news they can and 24-hour news gives them this opportunity.
The fact that more people drive to work effects newspaper sales, mainly in the broadsheet segment of the market. People who used to commute to work in the city’s would often buy newspapers to read on there journey in the morning, now they drive and don’t need to read the newspaper to keep themselves entertained in the morning rush. This has caused the decline in daily newspaper sales.
Online newspapers have caused huge competition in the market place. Business people who sit at there computer screens all day have very easy access to online papers and have the advantage of not having to carry a huge paper around with them. They are also cheaper. Most online papers are free; some have a small subscription charge but generally thy are a lot cheaper than purchasing a broadsheet newspaper. Another reason the broadsheets are facing problems is because of the declining and very competitive prices of tabloids and mid market tabloids.
The first online newspaper was created by the broadsheet The Telegraph in 1994. Online newspapers have many benefits. They are constantly up to date, they can update there stories in the same that 24-hour news does. You can use the archives on an online newspaper to look at old stories or look into the backlog of details in a story. Online newspapers can have a greater variety of articles because the Internet has unlimited space. So stories that they might not have had space for in the paper can be put onto the online paper. Another thing that might appeal to people who use online newspapers is that you can tailor your news. They can choose what sections of a paper they want and have them sent to there email address every morning allowing them the satisfaction of not having to rummage through a whole paper to find the things that they want to read.
But the British newspapers are fighting back. Many papers have begun to include supplements allowing them to further segment the audience and attract a wider spectrum of readers, thus increasing their circulation. By including a magazine type supplement with fashion news and make up tips an newspaper can attract a higher female audience, in the same way by adding a sporting supplement a newspaper is likely to increase its male readership.
It is increasingly becoming the case that newspapers are aiming to attract an audience of a, b and C1’s to read there papers. These people have more money and are more influential in our society. They hold more of the power. The main problem with this is the “dumbing down” of the other half of our society who are now catered for by the tabloid t.v. Another problem with this is that the newspaper industry is cutting down the entire market size, as they are not catering for over half the population (the C2, D and E’s). The launch of The Sun in 1969 by Murdoch shows that by catering for this audience you can become an extremely successful newspaper.
In 1969 Murdoch enticed his target audience using the very medium that he was planning to be in competition with, television. Murdoch saw that his target audience tended to watch a lot of television. He went onto invest a lot of his time and money in tabloid television, recognising its great appeal to the lower classes, the larger segment of the market. Rupert Murdoch also embraced new technology. He used the new technology of the computer to move the newspaper industry away from its traditional home at Fleet Street to Wapping in 1984.
Broadsheet newspapers have always aimed at the more educated people and for this reason their online newspapers have generally been more successful. They aim at office worker who will have easy access to computers and their online papers. It appears that currently the newspapers may cause an information divide. The higher-class members of our society will become more and more informed and the lower classes will become less and less informed.
However, there are drawbacks to electronic newspapers. They are not portable, not available to everyone and many people find it uncomfortable to read off a computer screen. Newspapers can challenge all these reasons. They are portable and can be carried around as they are light. They are available to a mass audience because they are both cheap and easily accessible and they are not difficult to read. For these reasons I personally believe that British newspapers will always remain. They are not just a source of news but are built into the British institution.
Newspapers are by no means old fashioned. They are all modernising, most papers now have their own online set up and many have phone and text polls to keep up with the raise in the popularity of mobile society. The British newspaper industry is good at reacting to change and has dealt with the invention of radio and television. Some people feel that there will not be place for newspapers in an ever-crowding market place. But in media crowding it has been shown that while there is rivalry there will be room for everybody. Newspapers have fought against the odds before and will continue to do so.
