Joseph Jaffe on his Jaffe Juice blog points us to Long Tail Chris Anderson’s blog about the current media meltdown. Here are a few of his "low lights:"
TV: network TV had its lowest ratings week ever in July.
Music: weekly album sales set a 10-year low in July. For the year, CD album sales are down 4.2%; although digital single downloads (still less than 10% of the business) are up 77% and are nearly making up the difference in revenue terms.
Radio: the music radio listening audience is down 8.5% this year alone, continuing a multi-decade decline.
DVDs: shipments are down 4% so far this year, more than 30 million units behind the same period last year.
Newspapers: circulation, which peaked in 1987, is declining faster than ever and is down another 2.6% so far this year.
Anyone who is still buying into the myth that mass media is the only way to communicate with an audience is living on borrowed time. Mass marketing is out. In this day and age, it’s possible to find exactly who your audience is and speak to them directly without bothering trying to reach everybody else.
The successful businesses, ministries, and non-profits will be those who are able to define their message (their story) and successfully deliver it directly to their audience. Narrow-casting instead of broadcasting. The dinosaurs will continue to throw huge amounts of money at the mass media vehicles trying to broadcast their message to millions who aren’t listening and don’t care. They’ll never really find the audience they want.
Targeted email blasting, podcasting, and blogging are just a few ways businesses, ministries and non-profits are reaching out and touching their "tribe." Like Roy Williams says, "you speak to the dog in the language of the dog about the things the dog cares about." The new technologies enable companies to do this like never before.
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