TV Still Beats Internet For News
The Internet has made major inroads as a source of American news--largely at the expense of newspapers--but television is still the favorite medium for news, according to the Pew Research Center, which released the results of its biannual survey of news media consumption on Monday.
The survey, performed by Princeton Survey Research Associates International this spring, contains few surprises--but it does corroborate the long-term decline in readership for newspapers' print editions, with the trend most evident among younger Americans.
The total number of respondents who said they had looked at a newspaper the day before slipped from 40% to 34% from 2006-2008, according to Pew. Meanwhile, the number of people who say the visit an Internet news sites at least three times a week increased from 18% in 2006 to 25% in 2008.
Within this cohort, there is a subgroup that in effect relies on the Internet entirely for its news. This subgroup, constituting 13% of the total, has a median age of 35, making it the youngest of the cohorts surveyed. It is also more likely to have a college education (80%) than the population at large (approximately 45%). Looking at the phenomenon from another angle, 44% of all college graduates say they go online to read the news every day.
(At the same time, younger adults seem to be less interested in news overall, according to Pew, which found that over 30% of adults under the age of 25 don't seek out news at all on any given day. That's an increase over 25% who made the same statement in 1998.)
Both newspapers and online trailed television as a primary news source, however, with 46% of respondents saying they get most of their news there. Within the TV-watching cohort, the proportion that watches a 6:30 network newscast has declined since 2006--benefiting the major cable networks, Fox News and CNN.
Not surprisingly, the viewers of cable news tend to self-segregate by political inclination, although that tendency is more pronounced among CNN viewers, where more than half identify as Democratic voters. Fox News viewers are more evenly distributed, with 39% identifying as Republican voters versus at 33% as Democrats. TV news watchers in general are older (their median age is 52) and more likely to be unemployed (43%) than the population at large (currently 7%).
Recent MediaDailyNews Articles
-
Aereo Is Not Just For Cord-Cutters May 23, 6:34 p.m.
Are cord-cutters most likely to subscribe to Aereo? Not necessarily, according to early returns. CEO Chet ... -
Cars.com Drops Flag On NASCAR.com Sponsorship May 23, 6:25 p.m.
Cars.com has a need for speed. The site has a deal with Turner to sponsor a ... -
Worldwide Pay TV On The Rise, Big Growth In Asia May 23, 4:17 p.m.
North American pay TV subscribers may continue to show little or no growth for the first ... -
Activision Blizzard's Campaign Wins Grand Effie May 23, 4:12 p.m.
Video game marketer Activision Blizzards’ ad campaign “The Vet and the nOOb” for "Call of Duty: ... -
Mag Bag: Bonnier, Source Interlink Swap Mags May 23, 4:09 p.m.
Bonnier, Source Interlink Swap Mags Enthusiast publisher Bonnier Corp. continued wheeling and dealing this week with ... -
Madison Avenue Is Mad As Hell, March Mad: Takes More, Not Less Network TV May 23, 7:46 a.m.
Demand for network TV advertising, which had been lagging so far this year, surged in April ... -
NY1 Show Goes National May 22, 7:32 p.m.
Time Warner Cable (TWC) will begin distributing a show about Broadway and theater at large to ... -
TV Model: Nets, Stations Split Retrans 50/50 May 22, 6:02 p.m.
Gray Television CFO Jim Ryan suggested that networks may capture more than half of an affiliate’s ... -
Newspaper, Magazine Ad Fortunes Continue To Decline May 22, 5:59 p.m.
The release of fourth-quarter figures for newspaper advertising and first-quarter figures for magazine ad pages earlier ... -
Equifax Taps Dentsu's 360i As Lead Agency May 22, 5:24 p.m.
Data collection company Equifax has selected Dentsu shop 360i to be its lead agency -- for ...
Be the first to comment on "TV Still Beats Internet For News"
Leave a Comment