As the news industry shifts to multimedia, digital platforms, the leading companies are still struggling to complete the evolution to profitable, revenue-generating models, says a report from information industry analysts at Outsell, Inc. The study, 'Top 10 US Public News Companies: Print-to-Digital Market Size and Share,' is claimed to be the first to provide a baseline of size and share metrics. It is seen to offer an apples-to-apples comparison of news companies' online revenues as a percentage of total publishing revenue.
The report reveals an increasing split between the national/global players, like the New York Times Co., Dow Jones and the Washington Post Co., and the more numerous regional ones, both in strategy and in results. It also highlights companies that are just beginning to break out from the pack, like Lee Enterprises, as they solidify their strategies for the next stage of the Internet. The report focuses on two primary metrics - overall company performance and online usage - and calls out the top drivers for publishers that are outperforming their peers.
According to the report, the news industry still generates nearly all revenue from print sources. It significantly lags other sectors of publishing compared to the information industry overall, which generates about 58.5 percent of revenues from non-digital sources. Only three major news organisations earn at least 10 percent of overall publishing revenues from digital. It further states that companies' preparedness to transition from print to digital also varies widely. The report introduces Outsell's Circulation/Online Business Transition Ratio as one measure of their readiness, and reflects publisher disparity. Outsell's new metrics demonstrate that while performance tracks more closely on the legacy print side of the business, there are signs some publishers are beginning to break out of the pack online and bear watching for their innovations.
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