Johannesburg, 12 Sep 2006
New forms of news and entertainment media are overtaking traditional print channels at an alarming rate, according to Carnegie research.
Neil Jacobson, CEO of local media consultancy company FutureWorld, said yesterday at the Highway Africa conference, in Grahamstown, that the transition from print to digital media is best illustrated in the Carnegie study of 2005.
The US-based report indicated Web portals are now the most popular medium through which people in the 18- to 34-year-old population group access news and current affairs, with 44% visiting online news portals every day.
Newspapers, on the other hand, are read on a daily basis by only 19% of Americans in this age group. Jacobson noted that an even more staggering statistic is that almost as many individuals (17%) consume print media once a month or less.
He quoted the words of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who said last year to the Association of American Editors: "As an industry, many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably complacent... quietly hoping the digital revolution would just limp along."
The Carnegie report, entitled "Abandoning the News", revealed 29% of study participants (in the 18-34 category) regard online news as "up to date", compared with print`s rating of 4%. Some 49% of respondents said new forms of media "only provide news when I want it"; whereas 9% said print offers this characteristic. Jacobson argued that people increasingly want to be able to customise their news.
"People want to control their media, not be controlled by it," he said. "We`re doing Africa a disservice if we think African people won`t behave in the same way."
Jacobson pointed to how fast technology has changed other industries, and said the media is no different. "In the 1970s, we had very few consumer appliances, now there are thousands."
He noted that 42 billion minutes of calls were made over VOIP last year, fundamentally alerting the industry to dramatic and disruptive change. This realisation has, he argued, been missing in the media, as traditional media organisations fail to diversify adequately despite a general decline in print circulations.
"Changes happen very fast. In the 2020s, infrastructure will be embedded completely into an environment. The thought of bringing your laptop to a hotel with you will be as absurd as the idea of taking a television with you is now," he added.
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