2005 Annual Report - Online Audience

The next major question involving the growth of online news is whether consumers are substituting it for old media. The economic implications of the question are enormous.

A year earlier, the evidence pointed to the conclusion that rather than substituting online news for other forms, the majority of people - though not all - were mostly adding the Internet to the news they already consumed.

Has anything changed?

There is no simple answer. When asked directly, most people say they do not substitute online news for other news media. The Pew Research Center's Biennial News Consumption Survey from the spring of 2004 found that seven out of ten people (71%) who got news online at least once a week reported using other news media, such as TV, radio or print, as often as before. Just 15% reported using other media less, and 9% said they used traditional media more.11

Other survey data suggest those responses may not be the whole story. Looking specifically at television use, three surveys in 2004 found that online news users consume fewer minutes of television news than the population over all.12 Those findings add to evidence in earlier years that online use comes at the expense of TV viewing.

The situation for newspapers appears more complicated. Here most surveys find newspaper reading time to be roughly equal for online and non-online users. But one survey in 2004 found that readers of online newspaper Web sites were less likely than in the past to also read newspapers in print form. While those users were at least staying in the same genre - newspapers - the shift represented a sign that newspaper Web sites were cannibalizing print editions.13 That is confirmed by a host of other evidence, from continuing declines in readership, survey data and anecdotal reports from publishers that their online editions appear to be growing at the expense of their print editions.

Another intriguing piece of the puzzle may have more to do with citizen interest in news over all rather than a choice of one medium over another. Two years' data from the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future (formerly the UCLA Center for Communication Policy) suggest that the Web does not change the basic nature of a person's news consumption. Both the 2002 and 2003 surveys found that levels of online news consumption tend to mirror consumption levels of other news media. Heavy online news consumers, in other words, are also the heaviest readers of newspapers and magazines and the heaviest watchers of television.

Similarly, medium-level users of online news report medium use of newspapers, television and magazines. And light online news users are light users of the other three media.

Amount of Time Online News Users Spent Reading Newspapers Offline, 2003

Weekly minutes

Design Your Own Chart

Source: The Digital Future Report, USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future, September 2004

Light use is under 60 minutes a week, medium is 60 to 119 minutes, heavy is 120 minutes or more.

Amount of Time Online News Users Spent Reading Magazines Offline, 2003

Weekly minutes

Design Your Own Chart

Source: The Digital Future Report, USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future, September 2004

Light use is under 60 minutes a week, medium is 60 to 119 minutes, heavy is 120 minutes or more.

Amount of Time Online News Users Spent Watching Television, 2003

Weekly minutes

Design Your Own Chart

Source: The Digital Future Report, USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future

Light use is under 60 minutes a week, medium is 60 to 199, and heavy is 120 minutes or more

If the Web is just beginning to show signs of cannibalizing the old media, another factor may soon accelerate the move - the next generation of consumers.