Public relations and media expert Norman Birnbach, President of Birnbach Communications, Inc., was kind enough to take the time to discuss media trends in 2010. He describes what is happening with radio, television, newspapers, magazines, and online media. He also shares a few surprising trends that will be appearing in 2010 as well. Norman also blogs at the popular and highly regarded public relations blog PR Back Talk.
Thanks to Norman Birnbach for his time, and for his interesting forecasts in the fascinating field of media.
What was the background to your firm forecasting media and social media trends from year to year?
Norman Birnbach: Each year we prepare our annual TrendReport to help our clients look at structural issues impacting the increasingly evolving media and social media landscape as well as the stories we think the media and bloggers will be following -- with the goal of helping our clients take advantage of those trends to help our clients get closer and be more responsive to their customers. TrendReport is part of our strategic process as we develop a roadmap for our clients that is tied to their business objectives.
Your firm had conducted a Media Trends 2009 study. How many of the trend predictions proved accurate and do you have a few examples for us?
Norman Birnbach: We scored major points with our 2009 TrendReport, including:
• (sadly) that a lot of print newspapers and magazines would shift to online-only in 2009.
• We were right that hyperlocal media continues to be important. But dozens of local suburban weekly newspapers also closed last year -- so as a strategy, a hyperlocal approach will not save papers from poor business decisions (i.e. debt load) of their parent companies.
• The New York Times did not sell the Boston Globe, as it had threatened to do, but it did make more cuts in the Globe's budget.
• Local TV did indeed hit a bumpy road, especially local affiliates of NBC -- not that we predicted the Leno experiment.
• We got right some of the new features in Kindle 2.0, and were right that ebooks would start to take off. Amazon sold a larger percentage of electronic books during the 2009 Christmas season than in the prior year.
For a more complete list of what we got right, and what we didn't, please click to our Our Track Record on 2009 Predictions
For those forecasts that didn't turn out as expected, was the trend forecast partly correct or even early?
Norman Birnbach: Our prediction that people would start suffering from SNF (social networking fatigue) did not happen in general last year. However, a few celebrities -- including Miley Cyrus and Ricky Gervais who seem unlikely to share a point of view -- indeed seemed to be suffering from SNF, getting attention for quitting Twitter.
Meanwhile Rupert Murdoch did make more changes to the Wall St. Journal in 2009, including expanding its non-business coverage. But he has not "tarted" it up as he has done with other News Corp. dailies. Yet.
And while we continue to believe we were right in saying we need a new term for newspaper once they stop printing on paper. However, our designated term "newssites" has not been picked up.
What media trends are you following in 2010?
Norman Birnbach: We're calling 2010 the year of the online subscription because publishers of all kinds are finding out that advertising-only-supported sites are not self-sustaining. Charging user fees will allow these sites to survive. The New York Times has already pre-announced a subscription plan for 2011 (though the details may change). Online subscriptions won't limited to online news content. Twitter will unveil a business model that will likely be focused on charging fees to businesses that use Twitter.
And Rupert Murdoch, who is an ardent advocate of charging for online content, and owns a percentage of Hulu.com, will push Hulu.com to offer its video library on a per-viewing and on an unlimited basis. The same goes for some streaming music sites that currently are available for free. Additionally, we expect to see lots of coverage of 3-D TVs, the state of print media, the impact of the iPad (once it's actually available), the "new normal" and the freelancing or "perma-temp" status of the US workforce.
For a complete list of our 2010 predictions, please click to our 2010 Predictions, 1 through 12.
What are you expecting for television media in 2010?
Norman Birnbach: There's a lot of talk about the decline and fall of network TV, especially in the wake of the Leno-Conan fiasco. We don't see that happening in 2010. Yet the networks are definitely on the decline. For NBC, which has been shedding viewers, no change of late night hosts or programs may bring back those lost viewers. It's not as though those viewers were sticking around for drama at 10 p.m. on other networks. Most likely they were turning to cable programs or on-demand offerings, TiVo, Hulu.com or the Internet.
Is radio changing in its current form to a different format, especially in light of the changes in satellite radio and the rise of internet radio?
Norman Birnbach: Radio is a tough medium to kill -- for example, it survived the premature announcements of its death by video. Not in 2010, but perhaps as soon as two years from now, radio will face an unprecedented generational problem, Today's kids do not listen to radio. They listen to iPods. We think fewer people are buying clock radios for their bedsides -- more likely, they're buying clock radios designed for iPods (we need a new name for those devices, by the way). And probably the only radio they have in the house is in their stereo system -- if they have a stereo system. We've pretty much seen the death of the tape recorder, and a primary reason for tape recorders was to make mix tapes of your favorite music.
In the meantime, we've seen some superficial changes to formats, including fewer classical music stations, more sports radio, including sports talk radio, and in some markets an over reliance on music from the 80s & 90s -- people have iPods for that. With the exception for drive-time radio, unless it makes dramatic changes to their format, radio may just fade away.
Norman Birnbach (photo left)
What do you see happening in print media in 2010?
Norman Birnbach: Print newspapers and magazines will continue to struggle in 2010, and more will consider shutting down or transitioning to online-only, despite a (slower than we'd like) recovering economy. Although the number of magazines that shut down peaked in 2008, at 525, last year said goodbye to 360 magazines, including some major magazines like Gourmet, Metropolitan Home, Fortune Small Business. Last year also saw the deaths of major daily newspapers like the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer as well as dozens of smaller papers. Large newspaper companies also announced bankruptcies last year, and we expect more closings in 2010.
There is some good news: advertising pages may be increasing, according to Q1 projections, but only by 3 percent. However, print subscriptions continue to decline, and we expect newsroom layoffs to continue. The lesson: magazines from big publishing companies and significant circulations were not immune. Already, BusinessWeek SmallBiz announced (via postcard) that its Dec. 09/Jan. 10 issue was its last.
As for the continuing growth and evolution of the internet, what trends do you see happening?
Norman Birnbach: Some have called social networks to be the CB radio of our day (those who weren't around in the 70s can check out Wikipedia for background). and that social networks did well because people had too much time on their hands. But we feel that people will continue to use Twitter, Facebook and other social media services but they might not be updating their pages quite as often. Social media sites will consider rolling out new ways for users to post and engage via multimedia (audio and video).
Meanwhile the intersection of social media and traditional journalism will be increasingly busy. For example, while the Super Bowl continues to be the biggest non-holiday event for which Americans gather together, and while people comment on the ads as much as the games, advertisers themselves are looking beyond the ads, often offering websites with extended versions of some ads, driving viewers to their sites. Another example: Olympic sponsors are changing their approach this year -- rather than having social media simply an add-on to advertising and their PR activities- they are embracing it/integrating it.
Will social media continue its rapid growth and are there new social media platforms that are the new rising stars?
Norman Birnbach: One rising star will be live integrated real-time interactive multimedia web events -- events that combine live video, and offering the ability to post and read comments on Twitter and Facebook windows. Last year, Bill Cosby conducted the first-ever interactive townhall to introduce Cosnarati, a socially conscious hip hop group that he produces offering a live videostream, with a real-time Q&A function and the ability to post comments on Twitter and Facebook. The event gave users a number of ways to interact with Cosby, and could offer a solution for network TV -- if they can find a way to make money off it
You are forecasting intriguing trends in in-flight internet availability. What are those trends?
Norman Birnbach: First, we think mobile access to content will become increasingly important in 2010.With the likely popularity of the iPad, continued popularity of inexpensive netbooks, and increasingly powerful app phones, content will need to be platform-agnostic, including audio and video, developed to meet the demands of several key platforms (and not just the iPad and iPhone). It's not just newspaper publishers who need to think cross-platform; it's all businesses, whether they're trying to reach consumers or B2B customers.
We will also see more in-flight Internet access in 2010. By 2011; it won’t even be something airlines tout as another reason to fly with them. Lufthansa rolled out new service: web surfing from 30,000 ft at $3/min. (What does it cost for tech support?) We can expect more conference calls and emails, and flying cross country no longer means being unable to respond to email. But battery life, additional sockets, and headphones will be boom businesses.
The rise of business videoconference calls may increase the noise level, but not to the point of requiring talking and no-talking sections. As with other aspects of high-speed Internet access, though the Internet was established in the U.S., count on international airlines to be ahead of domestic airlines in the type of services offered travelers. (Coffee, Tea or Internet Access?)
Are there any surprising trends in 2010 that were unexpected in 2009?
Norman Birnbach: Yes -- the continued importance of print media. Even as the resources allocated to practicing it diminish -- fewer print newspapers, fewer reporters at those print papers, and less space in those papers -- yet traditional journalism conducted by newspapers will continue to drive content across the web. A 2009 study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found though there are a lot more places to find news online, "of the stories that did contain new information, nearly all, 95 percent, came from old media -- most of them newspapers." In other words, most of the news articles found online basically picked up content from traditional sources, like newspapers, adding some commentary, but not new facts.
What is next for Norman Birnbach in 2010?
Norman Birnbach: Until now, getting ink was the main goal of PR agencies, but that mindset will disappear the same way "counterclockwise" and "newsstand" will, replaced by advances in technology that have eliminated "dial-up" from our vocabulary. The rapidly evolving media landscape means that it is more important than ever to stay ahead of the trends that impact print, broadcast online and social media, with our goal of helping our clients engage with their customers as well as with the media.
At some point, fairly soon, we won't be making as much of a distinction between the different types of media because the lines between them will overlap and blur. Already some newspapers offer live video of major events while some broadcast outlets update news via their blogs. It's all going to converge, and I'm working to help our clients and our agency be in position to work and communicate cro.
