May the Force (of old media) be with you

I'm sitting here with a copy of Brad Howard's article in Digital Media entitled "Print Strikes Back", about how digital is taking a very long time to kill of the print industry. I do think that the death of newspapers at the hands of online was always a tad exaggerated. I think that even more when tucked up in bed of a Saturday morning with Herald and a cup of tea.

But I still think that too much value is placed on heritage media format, and sadly, often by other forms of legacy media. Is that a kind of 'scratch my back and I'll scratch your' I wonder.

Brad's article (worth the read) talks about the 10% rule - newspaper circulation accounts for about 10% of readership, but online activities account for only about 10% of revenue (hat tip: Scott Karp). That said, it seems that old media still has the credibility and, as I've blogged before, is definitely seen as where the money is

I've got a couple of particular cases I am grappling with right now, which I won't got into, but I am struggling with how to get people to let go of traditional media- and take the plunge. In one case, a major brand is thinking of a beautifully targeted reality TV series. Talent is organised, audience (nicely niche) is assured - but they want free-to-air TV and not subscriber TV. In reality, 35,000 dedicated viewers who will shop in their store is a lot better than being shown to 120,000 uninterested people - but they want the ‘reach' of FTA (who, sadly, aren't interested because it is too niche!).

Another: when going after a target market of 35+, would you rather a three page spread in a magazine in a Saturday paper (circulation figures are 600,000+ - if you can trust them); or front page mentions, full page coverage and links from all over one of Australia's most popular celebrity/lifestyle portals (Unique Viewers more double that of the print publication). Sadly - the online coverage is second to the legacy coverage, even if the right audience is more likely to be online.

There is a great chart I found on an Amnesia presentation which highlights this from an attention angle really well. I don't have their permission (sorry, boys), but will add it here as soon as I can find it again. What it basically says is that we spend 18.7 hours on average on the internet, and only 3.7 reading print media. In the target market of 35+, online is still 17.7 hours versus 3.65.

I love old media. New media would be so boring without it - but isn't it time we really started to think about where our audience is (and how we might reach them)?