• by Wayne Friedman , April 6, 2018

Mid-sized and small market TV stations and related websites have higher news consumption than newspapers or other media-rated sites, with bigger markets seeing newspapers on top, according to a new study.

Among 37 medium-sized and smaller markets -- representing a market size of 25 to 205 -- television websites were first, according to research from the Knight Foundation.

The breakdown of daily site visitors by medium is: TV, 52%; newspapers, 38%; pure-play local online, 3%; public radio/TV, 2%; and commercial radio 1%.

In 22 bigger TV station markets, market size one through 24 -- which included Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta, and Philadelphia -- newspaper websites came out on top.

The breakdown of daily site visitors by medium is: newspapers, 54%; TV, 41%; public radio/TV, 1%; commercial radio, 0.4%; and  pure-play local online, 1%.

Knight says it did not include New York and Washington, D.C. in these results because together, those markets have three major national newspapers that would have altered results.

The website results of daily visitors were tabulated based on reports from Easycounter.com, Knight says. Totals for each media outlet were combined by category and percentages derived by dividing the total number of daily visitors into each media category’s combined numbers.

Citing an estimate from SNL Kagan, the Knight Foundation study says digital advertising for local TV stations accounted for $2.12 billion in 2016, compared to $18.06 billion from-over the-air advertising