The Future of Print Media

I spent Monday afternoon with a new industry group: Print Power. As one might gather from their name they have been formed from leading print companies (Associated, News International, NPA, PPA etc) to promote print as a united medium.

They asked me to represent the media buying industry, and speak on the subject “What does print have to do to earn a crust in a modern media world”.

This came hard on the heels of a request two weeks ago to appear on a Thinkbox programme and speak to the future of TV advertising.

The contrast between the future prospects for the two media channels was shocking. The death of both TV and press has been banded about by industry pundits for at least ten years. Normally these arguments are ill constructed and based on short term share loss to new channels. Over the longer term most channels (and cinema is a great example) reinvent themselves and recover both consumer audience share and revenues.

And that would appear to be the case with TV. With the launch of YouView, Google TV, IP enabled sets from Sony and Samsung, and a host of other initiatives TV is reinventing itself. We will see more change in the next 30 months than I have seen in my last 30 years in media. In fact I think the future of TV deserves a blog of its own!

But the future for print media is, for the moment at least, bleak. In the last 13 years the total print share of advertising revenue has fallen from more than 60% to 40%. And I see no new innovation coming over the horizon. The last major print jump forward was the Apple Mac in 1984 - revolutionising editorial and seeing the number of magazines leap from hundreds to tens of thousands. Print is suffering in reach- only 46% of us read daily; and in dwell times: we read for less than 3 hours a week. And ask consumers which media channel they wouldn’t live without and it's all screens, TV, computer, phone. Paper doesn’t get a mention.

Print at the moment feels like an aging sports team. They performed well once, but they are getting older. Competitors are younger and train harder. They should take a leaf from TV’s book: reinvention, but with consumer benefits remaining at the core. Print Power is maybe the first step in that, but it will be a long journey.

Mike Colling
Managing Director