Our readers based in the UK will need no introduction to the Sunday Sport and Daily Sport. For those of you from overseas, the papers are very much at the lowest common denominator end of the tabloid market. In its early days, the Sport was known for it's sensationalist headlines such as
These days it's more focused on the type of content available on its website.
Their focus on sex and sport has not made it immune from the problems afflicting the traditional media however. Owners Sport Media Group are reported today to have made an £18 million loss after a 50% drop in display advertising. The paper which focuses on "sex and sensation" (as well as presumably sport) relaunched last April differentiating its proposition slightly such that it now offers "sex, not sleaze". This appears not to help it's declining circulation which fell by 30% and is now down to just over seventy seven thousand. Despite this, The Daily Telegraph reports David Bailey, the chairman of Sport Media Group remaining bullish quoting him:
"A newspaper is a product that is baked fresh each day...the board is encouraged by the recipe we now have is beginning to gain acceptance and credibility in the market."
Time will tell, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the trend continuing and further declines in revenue and circulation this year.
The problems facing the traditional media are now so widespread that there is a user (or organisation) on Twitter posting regularly reporting the latest news - you can follow the updates at user name 'themediaisdying'. From these updates today I saw that The Christian Science Monitor's plan to move to publishing on-line only will still result in it shedding 7% of its staff. John Yemma, the editor of the Monitor explained
"Everybody in the news industry is suffering. Everybody is having to cut costs, and we're no exception. We at least feel some confidence about having made a strategic decision that moves us to a web-first form of journalism that should help us control our costs."
At Metrica, our media monitoring and media evaluation show that the claim that the 'media is dying' is an inaacurate statement, but no one can deny that it is undergoing massive upheaval and change. One area of the media that is continuing to do incredibly well is the computer games industry. Watch as more companies look to utilise this booming sector with their marketing efforts in the future.
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