Down with the hit, up with the niche.

There is an excellent article adapted from the “Long Tail” in Wired. It is about the decline of mass media “hits” and the incredible emergence of niche markets. The article has some terrific stats:

RADIO
Radio’s decline is substantial: in 1993 Americans listened to 23 hrs 15 mins per week to FM rock radio - in 2005 Americans listened to 19 hrs and 15 mins per week.

Time spent listening to the radio is at a 12 year low. Since 1998 the rock radio audience has dropped 26%.

In 1996 the Telecommunicaitons act brought in a perfect storm of competition, adding more than 700 FM stations into the fray, while simultaneously relaxing ownership limitations. This allowed Clear Channel and Infinity to buy up a bunch of stations and bring in the era of true cookie cutter playlists, thereby competing against the greater diversity of stations with LESS diversity and quality. Not smart.

Noticeable competitors to FM rock radio are, surprisingly, the cell phone, which offers a productive way to get business done while commuting, AM talk radio, your ipod of course and then the real killer: quality satellite radio.

MOVIES
Last year box office declines continued as they have since 2001, falling 6%. The average 25 blockbusters in any year of this decade account for 5% less of the total gross than in the 1990s and they have cost 57% more.

NETWORK TV
Network tv ratings continue to plummet as people scatter to cable. Since 1985 network rating have fallen from 75% to less than 50%. Collectively, the hundreds of cable channels surpass the networks in total viewership – no single channel dominates.

Real death knells are ringing louder than ever as the mega-events draw fewer and fewer devotees: in 2005 the World Series had the worst tv ratings of all time, 30% lower than the previous year. NBA playoffs were down 43% compared to 2004. The 2006 Grammy awards were down 31% from two years ago. The winter Olympics had the worst ratings in 38 years, down 36% from the 2002 games in Salt Lake City.

NEWSPAPERS
52% of Americans read a daily newspaper, compared with 81% four decades ago.

MAGAZINE
Magazine newsstand sales are at their lowest since 1970.

NOVELS
The average amount of weeks a best seller stays on the top ten list has fallen by half in the past decade.

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The emergence of “hits” is a zero sum game phenomena that really only coincided with limited broadcast time, limited bandwidth and limited shelf space. If there is only one supermarket, and it has limited shelf space at eye level, there can only be one or two winners. But in a world with unlimited shelf space, super megaplexes, 50 billion channels and more every day, the mass market “hit” is fragmenting into a million mini-markets with sub-markets beneath them.

Credibility, quality, endurance and word of mouth has always been antithetical to the muscle behind a hit, but in these days of increased competition and niche markets, it is the only way to succeed.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/longtail.html

Labels: Old Media Deathwatch