A Pew Research Center July/August 2021 studysays 51% of consumers now get their news content “often” via digital devices. This is down from around the same period a year ago (August/September), which was at 60%.
Likewise, TV stations and networks went in the same direction: 36% of consumers said they got their news “often” from TV in 2021, down from 40% in 2020.
What went up was respondents in the survey who shifted their news consumption to a “sometimes” description. This was higher for both TV and digital -- TV going to 32% (from 28%); digital devices moved to 33% (from 26%).
Overall, we might believe digital devices and digital news sites -- essentially digital anything -- are moving ever higher in terms of consumption. Surprise! Some popular digital news sites are recording lower usage.
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Recent results from ComScore MediaMetrix show Politico.com with an October 2020 decline of 48% to 23.2 million visitors (from 44.7 million). Vox.com sank 44.5% to 19.1 million (from 34.3 million).
More sites are sinking: The Hill.com, ABCNews.com and TheGuardian.com each lost 30%. The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Forbes.com and Vice Media all dropped more than 20%.
Pew also asked what devices consumers “prefer” — which remained fairly stable year to year. Digital devices earned a 50% preference score, TV saw a 36% number.
Why the low TV number? In part, it might be those comparisons to a year ago -- the presidential election, the COVID-19 pandemic period. One might also guess it has to do with changing demographics: Young digitally focused media consumers versus older traditional TV users.
These findings must be concerning to TV news executives -- not just the large declines among traditional TV news networks, but especially for local TV stations newscasts -- even as local TV stations are doing their best to extend their news content to digital platforms.
But what about the micro-trends -- questions about factual accuracy, raised over the last few years, of traditional news platforms and many digital news sites?
Will future news consumers -- of every demographic -- be more discerning and circumspect when it comes to news content? And if so, what business outcome will result?