Tuesday, August 9, 2011

television is the future

A big question: in a climate of major financial crisis, what media will suffer most, which ones will keep growing?
If you look at the ad figures for the first months of 2011, the answer is obvious. Television is the great winner. Newspapers are in very bad shape.

In the US, the Washington Post, for the second quarter, had 12% less in advertising income for print and 16% less on its websites. The only very profitable part of the group was its television network.

Same thing for the New York Times, 6.4% less for ads on print and only plus 2.6 for Internet.


For the same period, the television networks registered a healthy growth of their adsales; (see the analysis of the advertising market in http://nytimes.com).


In France, the situation is similar. The two main private broadcasters, TF1 and M6 had a good first two quarters. The national and regional newspapers suffered badly from a sluggish market. Most of them will be in the red at the end of the year.

Why is television so successful with the advertisers? There are several reasons: television has still a very large audience in spite of Internet or, sometimes, thanks to Internet that provides another access to the programs. Moreover, it is considered as a "safe" media, whose public is well known and measured, contrary to the print. After all, advertisers have used it for 60 years.

These figures are very promising for Vincent Bolloré. He owns two TV channels broadcast on TNT wich are designed to be highly profitable and his free sheets will soon dominate the print market. With the help of Havas, his advertising agency, he is about to be a major player on the media market.