FC: Americans ditching TV for online news, Pew Research survey says

[Declan McCullagh <declan () wired com>]

News report:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/419313.asp

Text of report:
http://www.people-press.org/media00rpt.htm


   Investors Now Go Online for Quotes, Advice
   INTERNET SAPPING BROADCAST NEWS AUDIENCE

     * Introduction and Summary
     Section I: The Changing Media Landscape
     Section II: Internet News: More Log On, Tune Out
     Section III: Financial News: Traders Turn to the Internet
     Section IV: Attitudes Toward the News
     Section V: Media Credibility
     The Questionnaire and Overall Breakdowns

   Traditional news outlets are feeling the impact of two distinct and
   powerful trends. Internet news has not only arrived, it is attracting
   key segments of the national audience. At the same time, growing
   numbers of Americans are losing the news habit. Fewer people say they
   enjoy following the news, and fully half pay attention to national
   news only when something important is happening. And more Americans
   than ever say they watch the news with a remote control in hand, ready
   to dispatch uninteresting stories. To some extent, these trends are
   affecting all traditional media, but broadcast news outlets -- both
   national and local -- have been the most adversely affected.

   [INLINE] These are the principal findings of the Pew Research Center's
   biennial survey of the national news audience, which documents the
   rapid emergence of the Internet as a news source, as well as a
   significant decline in regular viewership of broadcast television
   news. Fully one-in-three Americans now go online for news at least
   once a week, compared to 20% in 1998. And 15% say they receive daily
   reports from the Internet, up from 6% two years ago. At the same time,
   regular viewership of network news has fallen from 38% to 30% over
   this period, while local news viewership has fallen from 64% to 56%.

   Among younger and better-educated people, the Internet is making even
   bigger inroads. Many more college graduates under the age of 50 go on
   the Internet every day than regularly watch one of the nightly network
   news broadcasts. And generally, the survey finds that people who are
   interested in the news and go online tend to watch less network TV
   news. The survey also finds modest declines in the viewership of
   television news magazines and the morning news shows, but these slips
   appear unrelated to Internet news competition.

   The digital tide is having less of a direct negative impact on cable
   TV news, radio and print outlets. The Pew Research Center survey finds
   no evidence that Internet use is driving down regular use of cable
   news channels, daily newspapers, or radio news. However, all news
   outlets are being affected by the public's slowly declining appetite
   for the news.

   Less than half of the public (45%) now says it enjoys keeping up with
   the news a great deal and just 48% say they follow national news
   closely most of the time. Both of these percentages represent a modest
   decline from two years ago, when 50% said they enjoyed keeping up with
   the news and 52% reported following national news closely most of the
   time. But the percentage of Americans saying they enjoy keeping up
   with the news has fallen steadily since the mid-1990s.

   The generational divide on these questions is striking. Just
   one-in-three young adults (31%) enjoy keeping up with the news. In
   contrast, well more than half (57%) of those age 50 and over enjoy
   following the news. While younger people don't like the news so much,
   they do like having a wide variety of information sources from which
   to choose. Older Americans, who have a greater affinity for the news,
   often feel overwhelmed by the increasingly crowded media landscape.

   As a consequence, Internet news is attracting many younger people who
   have only a marginal interest in the news as well as serious news
   consumers. In fact, Internet news has a relatively larger place in the
   lives of those with access who don't enjoy the news than among those
   who do. The Internet, with its headline news format and capacity for
   quick updates, is clearly attractive to this type of consumer. On the
   other hand, the Internet's capability for providing more depth on a
   given subject also appeals to those with large news appetites, such as
   affluent college graduates.

   [INLINE] In that regard, the growth of Internet news has had a
   dramatic impact on the way Americans, particularly those with access
   to technology, get information on business and financial matters. For
   active investors -- those who have traded stocks within the past six
   months -- the Internet has largely supplanted traditional media as the
   leading source for stock quotes and investment advice. The Internet's
   capacity for personally-designed news and information is clearly a
   factor here. Nearly six-in-ten (58%) active traders who log on to the
   Internet for such information have customized online stock portfolios.

   So far, this quiet revolution in financial news has had less of an
   impact on the general public and less active investors, who still tend
   to go to the traditional media for stock quotes and advice. But
   underscoring the general popularity of the Internet for financial
   news, 16% of all Americans volunteered that they would turn first to
   the Internet for news if the market were to crash 1,000 points; cable
   news was mentioned second most frequently, at 14%.

   As Americans grow more reliant on the Internet for news, they also
   have come to find online news outlets more credible. Despite the
   controversy over news-gathering techniques employed by some Internet
   sites, those who go online generally give Internet news operations
   high marks for believability. In fact, the online sites of such
   well-known news organizations as ABC News get better ratings from
   Internet users than the ratings accorded the traditional broadcast or
   print outlets.

   But having a familiar name clearly helps. Internet-only news sources
   such as Yahoo, Netscape and America Online's News Channel get lower
   ratings than other, better-known news organizations on the Internet.
   Still, the believability ratings for these organizations are
   comparable to those of network television news and other traditional
   sources. Internet news organizations that specialize in providing
   original content, such as the online magazines Slate and Salon, were
   less well-known and got lower ratings from Internet news users.

   Other Findings
     * Americans have an ever-expanding appetite for new technology. More
       than half now own a cell phone, up from 24% just five years ago.
       One out of five Americans (18%) have a satellite dish, and 5% own
       a Palm Pilot.

   [INLINE]

     * As large numbers of younger Americans turn to the Internet for
       news, the audience for traditional media is aging. Nearly half of
       those under age 30 (46%) go online for news at least once a week,
       compared to just 20% of those age 50 and up. These older Americans
       are far more likely to say they watched TV news (67%) or read a
       paper (58%) yesterday.

     * More people are finding innovative ways to use technology in their
       personal lives. A sizable minority (15%) of active investors get
       stock quotes and market updates via some form of wireless device,
       such as a cell phone or pager.

     * With the viewership of network news declining, and cable news
       audiences remaining flat, network's lead over cable has narrowed
       to 11 percentage points (51%-40%) from 17 points (57%-40%) in
       1998. When speciality channels, such as all-sports ESPN are
       included, the cable audience is 61%.

     * CNBC, primarily a business network, now draws better than
       one-in-ten Americans (13%) on a regular basis. But CNBC is the top
       choice of those active investors who identify television as the
       main source of stock updates.

     * More than half of Americans (53%) say they wish they had more time
       to follow the news. Time pressures are a particularly big factor
       for working women; nearly two-thirds (65%) want more time to
       follow the news.

     * The remote control has become an indispensable tool for most
       television news viewers, especially young people. Three-quarters
       of those under age 30 say they watch the news with the remote in
       hand; 54% of those over age 50 agree.

     * Men and women have different news interests, and this is reflected
       in the news they pursue online. Technology is a top draw for men,
       while women most often seek news on science and health. But
       overall, weather information is the leading online news topic.

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Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 10:50:38 -0400
To: politech () vorlon mit edu
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: FC: Feds probe AOL instant messaging service for antitrust
 violations
Cc: johnmac () acm org
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[So now we have probes of AOL, eBay, Cisco, real estate and airline web 
sites, and of course Intel and Microsoft. Am I missing anything? --Declan]

**********

From: "John F. McMullen" <johnmac () acm org>
Subject: Anti-Trust Out of Control?
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 10:40:59 -0400

From the Wall Street Journal - Am I missing something or is this just plain
silly - a total lack of understanding by the FTC? One does have to be an AOL
subscriber to use either AIM or ICQ (I'm not). It seems to me that it would
be still be fine if one did have to be - it would be a feature of a system
in competition with other services such as MSN - but the fact that one does
not have to be a subscriber to use it makes me think that THESE GUYS JUST
DON"T GET IT.

Although it does bother me that some really neat software that I saw running
on a Palm VII won't run on my TRS-80 - does that sound like something for
the FTC?

June 14, 2000   [NL]
Antitrust Concerns Spur FTC To Probe AOL's Instant Messaging
By JOHN R. WILKE and NICK WINGFIELD
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- Federal antitrust enforcers are examining America Online
Inc.'s dominance of popular instant-messaging services as part of their
review of AOL's $113 billion buyout of Time Warner Inc., lawyers and
industry executives said.
Federal Trade Commission investigators have asked for documents and
scheduled depositions with AOL and its competitors in instant messaging, as
one of several issues under review in the deal, these people said. AOL's
Instant Messenger and ICQ are among the most popular services on the Web,
with millions of users sending more than a billion messages a day -- many of
them young people who spend hours a day online.
AOL, based in Dulles, Va., has more than 150 million chatting accounts and,
by some estimates, controls 90% of the instant-messaging market. "It's the
only reason I use America Online," says Taylor Caprio, a 20-year-old New
Jersey college student. "One of my friends doesn't have it and she's always
out of the loop."
Because of AOL's wide lead, instant messaging has become one of the Net's
most high-profile battlegrounds. The conflict is fueled by AOL's
longstanding efforts to prevent competitors, including Microsoft Corp., from
connecting their networks with ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger. Instant
messaging is the rare market in which Microsoft finds itself the underdog.
Today, AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ are closed systems that allow only
registered users to communicate with each other; AOL doesn't even allow AOL
Instant Messenger and ICQ users to swap messages yet. Competitors charge
that the scenario is rather like an AT&T Corp. long-distance customer being
able to call only other AT&T customers.
"This is no different than e-mail, telephone or the postal service," says
Ross Bagully, chief executive officer of Tribal Voice, a unit of Internet
investment firm CMGI Inc. that has about eight million users for its own
instant-messaging product. "We want to be able to communicate with
everybody."

[...]

Just this week, another
competitor, Odigo Inc. (www.odigo.com), which has 750,000 users of its own
instant-messaging product, was blocked by AOL.

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