August 17, 2006 | In Business, Technology |
The convenience of up-to-the-minute news is now freely available all over the internet, but that doesn’t mean that the web will replace local TV newscasts, according to a new research study by Crawford Johnson & Northcott.
The research firm conducted a survey of 861 internet users and found that 75% of respondents watch a local TV newscast at least once a week with 52% watching one every day.
“We’ve heard a lot of talk about how the Web is replacing television as a source for news. This indicates that’s not the case at all. Web users as a group watch as much local TV news as anyone else,” said Bob Crawford, a partner with the Crawford, Johnson & Northcott market research firm.
Overall, there’s no doubt that the internet is causing immense changes in the worldwide media landscape, and is putting pressure on television in many ways. Local news programs, however, seem to be immune to many of these changes.
Although useful and convenient, web-based news sites will probably never be able to totally displace the consistent and familiar news format offered by local broadcasters.
Personally, as part of the “new generation,” I rely on the Internet for almost all the news I actually pay attention to, however, for “news discovery” television seems to be the way to go for now.
I think if we see RSS-feeds catch on, particularly with the looming release of Windows Vista, we’ll start to see more and more Vodcasts, taking the place of mainstream news.
Comment by Joey — August 31, 2006 #