Meeting new readers in the transition to digital newspapers: Lessons from the entertainment industry

Abstract

In this work, carried out at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for Management of Enterprise Media, Entertainment, and Sports (Memes), we suggest that there is hope and reason for media companies to expect a recovery from the current crisis. As journalists and researchers in communication, we are concerned about newspapers´ sustainability, and we refuse to consider a future scenario without the press. According to this objective we focus on the entertainment industry with the goal of learning from it how to survive and even grow despite freely available content on the Web. We consider the unstoppable growth in users and revenue experienced by Netflix, Amazon and iTunes, and pull from it lessons learned that might help newspapers to navigate the digital landscape. Our hypothesis is that digital newspapers can find new readers in the segment of digital consumers who already "pay" for digital content including streaming movies and television shows. Sales, subscriptions, and online rentals experienced significant growth in 2013, bringing them closer to the sales figures of hardware such as DVDs and blu-ray discs. And, although piracy is an issue in the entertainment industry, there remains room for revenue growth.