Audiences’ Consuming Habits Affect the Business of Media
What’s my media consuming habit?
I would like to know the big news of the day in the morning. I go to email to check the daily briefing from The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. I also go to Google to search for news I want to know. Besides, I listen to NPR news with the App on my phone. Normally, I choose to click the breaking news that is significant in my opinion. I also click news about educational, cultural and international topics because it always interests me, as I’m passionate about reporting on those topics.
In one word, my principle of consuming media is: efficiency. I want to get news as much as possible and save time as well.
Therefore, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and NPR news are best fulfilling my needs. Both The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times have timely daily briefing in weekdays, which can be subscribed. Their content is diverse, abundant and concise, so I will know the key news everyday very quickly through the briefing, and I can further read the full article. NPR also fits my needs because it has a mobile app. It works efficiently since I can listen to the radio broadcast with my phone when I cook, eat, exercise, etc.
However, I’m still looking for news sources that can meet two more media needs.
Honestly, I prefer reading text on mobile instead of computer for convenience, but most stories are long and are not perfectly suitable for mobile. Therefore, I expect an App that can create user-friendly news content. The other expectation would be to watch TV news on tablet. I don’t have access to TV news right now, so I wish there can be an App broadcasting all TV news simultaneously as the real TV for tablet devices.
In my opinion, an increasing number of people, especially younger generations, are inclined to consume media through new technologies nowadays. They are getting more news on mobile via App or social media than from newspaper, magazine, TV, radio and other traditional sources. This is a big challenge that the traditional media industry confronts.
I also think that this developing phenomenon are affecting and changing advertising in media industry. News platforms on mobile, tablet, social media and website have more advertising that faces to younger audiences, and traditional media have more advertising targets to older audiences.
I believe that media companies need to hear consumer’s voice, understand and respect people’s media consuming habit if they want to succeed in this fast-changing and technology-trending society.
To tackle the challenge, media companies can pay attention to new technology and launch digital news platforms. They should develop multiple platforms and customize the content that best fits each platform. Meanwhile, they need to try to keep the consistency of the topics of contents between different platforms, so that audiences can find what they want in any platform. What’s more, media companies can use diverse contents to attract various groups of audiences.
