Let’s be really retro and buy a newspaper

Research from Adweek is bad news for the long-term health of the Newspaper Industry.

Daily newspaper readership skews heavily toward the older age groups. Almost two-thirds of those ages 55+ (64%) say they still read a daily newspaper almost every day. Younger Americans read newspapers less often. Less than one-fourth of those ages 18-34 (23%) say they read a newspaper almost every day and 17% in this age group say they never read a daily newspaper.

The possibility of charging a monthly fee to read a daily newspaper’s content online suggests that it is unlikely to work. Three quarters of online adults (77%) say they would not be willing to pay anything to read a newspaper’s content online. Among the minority willing to pay, one in five online adults (19%) would only pay between $1 and $10 a month for this online content and only 5% would pay more than $10 a month.

The article includes research from Boston Consulting that comes to a similar set of conclusions.

In some ways this makes things easier for advertisers since the printed newspapers will become the sole preserve of the older person. I guess we will have to wait whilst the newspaper industry goes, what looks like futile efforts, to attract a younger readership and admits to the inevitable. Dick Stroud