Perhaps the greatest
uncertainty characterizing the media industry today is of a possibility that
the Internet is poised to replace newspapers as the most preferred medium of
news transmission. A grim speculation comes from Philip Meyer, author of TheVanishing Newspaper, that “if this trend was to continue, the
very last newspaper in the world would be
recycled in April 2040” John Naughton, a British journalist
and media guru, in his presentation at the 60th World Newspaper Congress in Cape Town in 2007, made a profound statement that the ‘ubiquitous Internet’
is replacing broadcast television and other
forms of media.
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google,
suggested that newspapers would need an adaptation strategy to survive. There is
a spate of speculations about the newspaper’s demise reported in countries like
the UK, the US, Australia and some Nordic countries portend doom for the printed
newspaper. Elsewhere in Europe, South Africa and South America, official data, however,
show that newspaper consumption is increasing, with Asia (comprising China,
India and Japan) emerging as the world’s largest market. In India, the number
of periodicals and newspapers increased from 41,705 in 19973 to 62,483
newspapers as of 31 March 2006. The Press Information Bureau (2000) reported a total
circulation of Indian Press as 105.7 million copies in 1997 which increase to
180.7 million copies in 2006, an increase of 70.9 percent within a decade!
Meanwhile, the phenomenal growth
in the number of Internet users increases from 36 million in September 2007 to
45.3 million in September 2008 in just a year portend a competitive threat to
the print media. An increase in online news readership has also been reported
in different parts of the country, particularly in the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka,
Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh Some studies on the growth of the Internet
in India and on users’ preferences and access habits have been done, though
little is known about the impact/effect of the Internet on the newspapers,
their circulation and on the readership preferences, and dimensions of the
impact.
For decades, the broadsheet has
dominated the media scene as the major news provider. Today, the newspapers, television
and radio are all vying for a bigger share of the news-dissemination market
with a more challenging form of new media emerging in the industry, i.e. the
Internet.
Facilitated by rapid
technological penetration since the 1990`s, the Internet has opened up choices
for ‘netizens’ to access news and information, as and when it unfolds, 24/7 at
the click of a mouse. As a result, people’s media consumption habits are
changing, particularly that of the young in the Western world at a much faster
speed than in other countries (with an exception of China with 316 million net
users and majority of them who are young).
Even in India, the prospects of
expansion are looking up. Better reach and spread of audio and visual media in
urban and remote areas, increase in literate population and the spread of new
information technology in small towns and semi-urban areas are indicative of
the pace at which new media forms are advancing.
NASSCOM’s (National Association of Software and services companies) latest report
‘Perspective 2020: Transform business, Transform India’ forecasts India as one
of the top global IT hotspots with a huge contribution of growth opportunities
from a fully untapped media market. Do
we need to italicize newspaper when it is a citation?
The report goes on to present a
very promising scenario for energizing the technology sector with
opportunities in emerging areas like digital media. “By 2020, 80 percent of the
industry’s incremental growth and 50 percent of the total opportunity will come
from currently untapped verticals (public sector, healthcare, media, and
utilities), customer segments (small and medium businesses) and geographies.”
The Indian IT industry has grown from US$2 billion in export revenues in 1998
to US$ 47 billion today, employing over two million people. Today, the industry
recognizes that the next decade will be fundamentally different from the last
one, owing to a radically restructured global economy; rapidly evolving
customer needs, services and business models; and rising stakeholder
aspirations. Concomitantly, the print media is witnessing an equally
exceptional growth with multiple editions of regional newspapers, making in-roads
in smaller town and cities. Unlike in the West, the future of newspapers in
India is almost secured by the rising demand for newspapers from all over the
country, which is primarily fueled by demand from the towns and rural areas
where literacy levels are increasing as well. In this changing scenario the
entry of new media types, most recently the Internet, poses certain new
challenges which need to be tracked and assessed.
If the broadsheet is witnessing
the entry of the Internet with potential threat to its existence; there are a
host of barriers that prevent the fast spread of web technology in the country.
Lack of technical know-how, unavailability of broadband or dial-up
infrastructure, lack of electricity supply and the cost factor are some of the
major factors that inhibit easy online accessibility. Both the media are growing
at their own rates. However, the growth of print media as well the Internet is
due to different reasons. For print media, the facilitating factors can be
attributed to an increasing rate of literacy, consequent informational aspiration
and an expanding rural market. Whereas the advancement of technology has given
leverage to the industry’s cost curtailing efforts, as well as enabled the newspaper
to reach remote areas with local editions. In the case of the Internet, computer
literacy, tax reduction on computer gadgets and other factors have led to
lowering of the cost and availability of broadband connection in ‘X’ cities as
well as second rank ‘Y’ cities based on the India Census 2001.
There is a significant trends which indicate that the Internet use is gradually expanding and preference for online news is showing an upward trend even in cities with low Internet penetration. However, online news as a major source of information still has a long way to go before it overtakes the broadsheet as the first choice of millions of readers. At present, the user base of Internet is predominantly urban and concentrated among youth and those with a higher level of education.
