A new report suggests that traditional media are losing audience to niche topic publishers online.
If users have an informational need not being fulfilled, then it is only a matter of time before a clever website publisher finds a way to do it.
It is the beauty of the Information Age. Anyone who recognizes an unmet need can set up online and start reaping the benefits.
But this was not always possible.
For the majority of television history CBS, NBC and ABC controlled about 99 percent of television broadcasting, according to Wikipedia. If you discovered a need not being met by the Big Three in the 1980s, you would need a hefty bankroll to start delivering it to the public.
Thankfully, that era is ending online, judging from the new Hitwise US News & Media Report and your publication could benefit greatly.
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News Events Fuel Drain
Internet traffic drawn from News and Media websites—like CNN.com and the New York Times—that is flowing directly to Entertainment/Multimedia websites—like YouTube and MSN Video—increased by 196 percent from April 2006 to March 2007, according to the report.
Spikes in this flow occurred around major video news events, like the hanging of Saddam Hussein and the death of Australian wildlife expert Steve Irwin, according to the report.
“Each major newsworthy video incident drives awareness of video content online, fueling the continued growth in video viewing online for both news and entertainment purposes,” according to the report.
The report also cites the success of celebrity gossip blogs like PerezHilton.com (currently number 4 on our Mequoda Blog100) as further deviations from traditional media.
When paparazzi photographed Britney Spears in revealing positions during a night out in early December 2006, the mainstream news media would not publish the uncensored pictures because of their lewd content.
But celebrity blogs like PerezHilton.com, which “are not required to adhere to journalistic standards…and do not censor content for profanity or nudity,” published the photos, according to the report.
During that week, the market share of gossip blogs went up 60 percent as ‘britney spears’ was the 5th most searched-for term on the Internet, according to the report.
A New Era in Niche Markets
The report continues to list a myriad of examples and statistics that point to users abandoning traditional media outlets, going to new information sources and creating a sustained level of increased traffic at the new websites.
We feel that this is pointing to one suggestion: niche topics are growing in popularity because they serve users what they want more precisely.
The media monoliths like the Big Three are too large to satisfy everyone completely. The Internet has created the possibility of every topic having a publication focused on it—meeting everyone’s informational needs.
If you are a publisher in a niche topic, this could be a great time for you. You should research how to better meet your customers’ needs with the Internet and go at it with full force. Find new ways to meet their needs that go deeper than the traditional media’s model.
Have you thought of a need in your market that the traditional media are not fulfilling?
If so, you need to build a website that profitably delivers your information to the pubic and Mequoda Group can help you do it. In our Generating Website Revenue Webinar, we describe how to successfully build a media empire from your niche topic publication.
