"Chicken Little, don your hardhat. Nudged by recession, doom has arrived," says
"On the Media" co-host Bob Garfield in his most recent Ad Age column.
In his own state-of-the-media-like report, Garfield covers the field. Here's how he sums up the state of each medium:
Newspapers: "Amid 23% population growth in the past two decades, U.S. newspaper circulation has dropped 20%."
Magazines: "In 2008, newsstand sales -- the profit engine of the industry -- fell 12%."
Local broadcast stations: "Bernstein Research predicts a 20% to 30% drop in 2009 TV station ad revenue."
National networks: "According to Nielsen Media Research, in the last reporting period, CBS's prime-time audience was down 2.9%. ABC was down 9.7%, Fox was down 17.5% and NBC was down 14.3%."
Cable: "The very coax the industry has been stringing for 50 years is now the pipe for broadband, which households increasingly are using to bypass pay cable entirely."
Internet: "What does it mean when online usage soars, yet the most popular publisher's value is cut by two-thirds?"
Garfield reiterates
the point made by Clay Shirky last week: "The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff gets put in place." Garfield says:
The post-advertising age is under way. This isn't about the end of commerce or the end of marketing or news or entertainment. All of the above are finding new expressions online, and in time will flourish thanks to the very digital revolution that is now ravaging them. The future is bright. But the present is apocalyptic. Any hope for a seamless transition -- or any transition at all -- from mass media and marketing to micro media and marketing are absurd.
