by cameron | Jan 27, 2008 | Australian media, Melbourne
Last year I did a blog post covering the general decline in circulation and readership for Australian newspapers.
The Press Council’s 2007 report shows a slightly healthier situation, with a handful of papers actually showing growth from 2001 – 2007. I’ve posted the main graph of Metro papers here (you might need to grab the actual image to read the details). To make it easy, I’ve coloured the papers with declining readership in yellow and the ones maintaining steady in grey.
However – when you read their report in depth, you notice that there has been some creative accounting with these figures in a desperate attempt to forestall the knowledge that their industry is closer to death than General Suharto (what? he died today? well…. let’s say Castro.)
The report sez:
A significant development has been the unprecedented initiative taken by newspaper proprietors, acting collectively, to establish a new organisation, The Newspaper Works, to reaffirm to advertisers in particular that newspapers offer them a better and more influential platform than other media and, complementarily, to improve total newspaper circulation and readership. The new organisation has also undertaken, in conjunction with polling organisations, to try to improve the techniques used to measure circulation and readership of print editions and to measure newspaper website traffic accurately.
(Italics mine).
So – they are factoring in their online readership. Fair enough. Here’s the secret though – as I’ve argued here before – the transition from paper to online is VERY BAD for the print news business. Why? Isn’t a reader a reader? It’s the economics, stupid. When you buy The Age, how much do you pay for the privilege? A dollar fifty? I’m not sure, i don’t buy it (unless I’m in it). When you read The Age online, how much do you pay? Nada. So – they are automatically making less money. What about advertising? Well – let’s say you’re an advertiser. If you want to advertise in a newspaper that people in Melbourne read, how many options do you have? A handful? If, however, you want to advertise on websites Melburnians read, how many options do you have? Bazillions. And that number is just getting bigger every year. So it’s simple supply and demand economics. You don’t make as much money from an online reader as you do from a print reader.
Okay, so revenues must be in decline. What happens next? Do they hire MORE journalists? No. As everybody knows, they hire less journalists. And so the quality of their content goes down. Does that make readership go up? I don’t think so. And so the cycle of rot sets in. Print news organisations have a very expensive operation on their hands. When revenues go down, when people get down-sized on a regular basis, morale drops and… hey I’ve seen it happen in a million IT companies. It’s what happens when you think you’re invulnerable to generational change driven by technology and you think your brand has some kind of magical power which will continue forever. Basically – you’re sucking on your own exhaust pipe.
We’ve had an opportunity to witness this last week with the announcement that ACP is closing down The Bulletin, a magazine I was fortunate to appear in a couple of times – when Josh Gliddon did the first MSM coverage of TPN back in Feb 2005 and again in October 2006. The Bulletin’s circulation had been down and it just didn’t make sense to keep it open, according to ACP management. And we all know how disinterested Packer 3.0 seems to be in the media business.
What did the ACP execs have to say?
The Bulletin is Australia’s longest running magazine and was launched in 1880.
In the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, The Bulletin had 57,039 in sales (Sept 07), which is down from circulation highs of over 100,000 in the mid 1990s. This trend is consistent with that experienced by many leading weekly news and current affairs magazines globally and is somewhat symptomatic of the impact of the internet on this particular genre.
It’s the beginning of the end.
by cameron | Jan 14, 2008 | Podcast
As you many have noticed, I recently launched a new religion which I’m calling “LOTU”, the Laws Of The Universe. If you missed that news, read this. On January 11, 2007, I held the very first church meeting of LOTU. As befits a 21st century religion, I held it in Second Life at TPN HQ. It wasn’t a huge turnout – about 6 people joined me for the session you hear recorded on this podcast and then another 6 or 7 people turned up later on, and we discussed LOTU into the evening.
To join the LOTU Facebook group (where you’ll be notified of upcoming meetings, etc), go here.
To join the LOTU discussion group, go here.
Stick Figures
“Stretch The Truth” (mp3)
from “Future Classic Exclusives Vol 1”
(Future Classic)
Buy at Inertia Distribution (Australia)
Buy at Amazon
More On This Album
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
TPN now has a HQ in Second Life! Add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends (that’s me). I’d be happy to show you around and help you find your SL legs.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.
You can show your love by buying me stuff from my Amazon wish list.
You might DIGG the show.
Get the TPN version of Particls.
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.
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by cameron | Jan 8, 2008 | Australian media, Podcast
Today I chat with Bronwen Clune, Founder and CEO of Norg Media, an independent Australian media company that allows anyone to contribute to the news as a Cit J (citizen journalist).
We talk about her vision for Norg (which stands for “news organisation”), how the media landscape is changing, and about being a female entrepreneur (my first ever female entrepreneur guest in 3 years??? WTF?).
It’s great to finally have Australia’s other online media entrepreneur on the show.
Bronwen is very popular on Twitter and you can follow her by clicking the photo below:
Thanks to @m0nty, @jodiem and @glemak for their questions submitted via Twitter during the show. Sorry to everyone else, you were too slow. 🙂
The track on today’s show is:
Burial
“Ghost Hardware” (mp3)
from “Untrue”
(Hyperdub)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody
Buy at Amazon
More On This Album
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
TPN now has a HQ in Second Life! Add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends (that’s me). I’d be happy to show you around and help you find your SL legs.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.
You can show your love by buying me stuff from my Amazon wish list.
You might DIGG the show.
Get the TPN version of Particls.
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
by cameron | Jan 3, 2008 | Uncategorized
I just heard about this poll today via @bronwen. I’m not going to tell you how to vote or anything cheesy like that. I want to comment on the list itself. I don’t think any of the people on the list, except maybe Marty Wells from Tangler and Duncan Riley, who was probably running the Blog Herald back then, would have had any kind of public profile 5 years ago. Who were the OzWebCelebs five years ago and where are they now? Frank Arrigo should have garnered more votes and I’m sure if he’d blogged about it he would have. I just think it’s cool that there are a whole bunch of new people on the scene in Australia, most of whom I consider mates. I know most of the people on that list and I consider them a terrific bunch of people. They are people I love to talk to and hang out with. They inspire me, challenge me, and keep me on my toes. Most importantly, they are people who have chosen to make a difference. They are stepping up, putting their ideas and energy on the line, trying to create something, build something. I respect each and every one of them.
by cameron | Dec 20, 2007 | Australian media, Podcast, TPN
There are a couple of stories about podcasting in Australia in The Age today. I chatted with both journalists at length over the last month for the stories but ended up with two lines out of a 2+ page story. Go figure. All of my journo and ex-journo friends (including Mrs R) this morning counseled me to just wear it on the chin. And perhaps they are right. But I’m pissed off about it anyway. And here’s why.
In the main story, by Andrew Bock, the ABC, Austereo (owner of Triple M and Fox FM) and even Salty Dog (congrats Dennis!) get their download figures trumpeted. Where are TPN’s figures? Omitted. Deliberate? I don’t know.
What I do know is that Fairfax, the owners of The Age, have a commercial relationship with Austereo. Fairfax hosts Austereo’s websites. Was that disclosed in the article? No, it was not. Accidental? Perhaps. According to the article, Austereo is doing more than 850,000 podcast downloads a month across all its stations. TPN is doing about the same (we spiked a few months back and hit about 800k, last month it was about 650K, which is where Austereo’s last annual report in July 2007 said they were at). TPN is a one-man, self-funded, three-year-old operation. Austereo is decades-old, publicly-listed company with revenues in excess of $255 million pa which has some of the biggest names in radio working on their shows.
Now if *you* were writing the story about podcasting, don’t you think this would have been an interesting comparison? Apparently someone at Fairfax didn’t think so.
Fairfax also now owns Southern Cross Broadcasting, owners of top radio stations 3AW and 2UE. Was that disclosed in the article? No, it wasn’t. If you take TPN’s listener numbers (450 – 500k per month) and compare those to, say, 3AW, I think we’re about the same size, perhaps even bigger.
Does Fairfax have a conflict of interest when it covers stories about radio and podcasting? What do you think?
By the way, I don’t blame the journo’s involved. They are both swell guys. I’m sure if their stories are being edited after they submit them, and important conflict of interest disclosures aren’t being made, then they would both be concerned. Is the paper interested in reporting news or in promoting a company they have a commercial interest in?
Luckily we now have alternative places we can get our news from, such as NORG. If you aren’t contributing to that already, I encourage you to. We have the tools now to report our own news. Of course, I’ll need to get my backside out of this chair so I know what’s going on the world before I’ll have much to contribute…
