To the point: late
For the past twenty years, it has been known that new media are damaging traditional print media, either by driving away readers, advertising, or both.
First came the free newspapers. This was nothing less than a fundamental attack on the publishers' long-standing business model: the big money was made from advertising, the rest came from subscribers. Subscribers dutifully paid a low premium compared to other countries, and most of them stuck with it.
The free newspapers caused a stir in the industry. Everyone complained, many saw the cultural downfall of the West coming. Some tried to get something going themselves. Or they developed their own only as a threat: a few days before the launch of the highly praised commuter paper Express, Tamedia bought the competitor 20 Minuten together with Espace Media. An ingenious move: at least the fat profits stayed in-house.
The old business model of the traditional newspaper remained in place - the hope was that the economy would improve.
Soon the new opponent showed up. The Internet. A big, colorful world in which almost everything was available for free. The publishers' entry began somewhat hesitantly at first, but with very few exceptions, they all made the same huge mistake. They gave away their content on the Internet. No one really knows why. But they still had advertising. For the time being, it is doubtful whether these revenues will solve the newspapers' earnings problem. At any rate, the revenues from online advertising only do so at most for the top 3 sites. Online advertising is just too cheap, people complain. For some time now, attempts have been made to counteract this by means of paywalls of whatever kind, with readers being asked to pay something, as in the past: The old business model is being reanimated. Let's wait and see if it works.
The next spectre soon followed. The mobile web. Apparently, no one could have imagined that mobile access to websites would increase so dramatically. And at the same time, however, revenues from advertising would decrease again by a factor of 10.
The old business model of the traditional newspaper no longer works. Is there a new one? No, but they are working on it.
Since many newspapers today appear on different channels (print, online, mobile, apps), agencies, clients, and also quite a few publishers demanded a common value per title. Until now, this has not existed. Today, an approach to such a study is being presented at the WEMF Media Research Day. Why only today?
Why are we always so late?
Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
pc.meier@werbewoche.ch
