Studying What Is Obvious about News Consumption
November 6, 2011
Sometimes studies confirm what observation and common sense should tell us. The results of two such studies were released last week.
In “Study: Tablet Users Love to Read the News, Still Reluctant to Pay for It,” Silicon Filter cites Pew Research Center’s Tablet Revolution study. There’s a lot more to this study than the bleak outlook for news organizations, but that’s the facet that concerns writer Frederic Lardonois:
Reading news sites and watching news-related video is about as popular as sending and receiving email, for example, and more popular than using social networking services. As the news industry struggles to find viable business models in this new world, though, one number that stands out is the fact that only 14% of U.S. adults have paid for news directly on their tablets.
The number is higher if you include the 23% who have a print subscription that they also access digitally, but the total is still somewhere around a third of users. Why buy the cow, after all?
Business News Daily also states the obvious with the revelation, “Facebook More Popular Than TV During Daytime.” Here, writer David Mielach cites this study from The Frank N Magid Associates. It’s no surprise that while folks, especially the younger generations, are stuck at a computer all day they are more likely to follow their Facebook friends than follow a soap opera. However, the data may prompt advertisers to focus more on social network marketing during the day and less on those pricy evening television ads.
By the way, the reverse was found to be true: during “prime time,” more people are watching TV than using Facebook. I guess some habits are more entrenched than others.
Cynthia Murrell November 6, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
