Channel 4 has managed to achieve the alchemy of turning analogue pounds into digital pounds – how can newspapers conjure the same trick, asks Raymond Snoddy
Few can doubt Richard Tait’s knowledge of television and television news and current affairs in particular.
Editor of both The Money Programme and Newsnight for the BBC, editor of Channel 4 News and editor-in-chief of ITN, Governor and Trustee of the BBC and still professor of journalism at Cardiff University.
Distinguished, but what on earth is Tait doing writing a striking chapter in a new book about the decline of print and what, if anything, can ultimately be done about it?
Even Tait himself wonders in his contribution to Lost For Words: How Can Journalism Survive the Decline of Print, to be published in January.
After all, despite the oft-predicted convergence of everything, eventually, newspapers and television have been running on very separate tracks and possibly heading to very different destinations and fates.
Did you ever see a senior newspaper executive at a television conference or indeed vice versa?
Tait’s claim – or to be more precise tentative question – is whether even at this late stage, newspapers do indeed have something to learn from television. He believes they do and item number one in the argument is Channel 4.
Last year the Government was playing with the idea of privatising Channel 4 as a result of a curious notion that only privatisation could protect the long-term future of the channel, whose special and challenging tasks include reaching hard-to-reach younger adults.
The Government view came under immediate attack and essentially self-destructed in the face of a House of Lords Select committee inquiry on the subject, special advisor Richard Tait.
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Far from being a basket case waiting to happen, the numbers showed that Channel 4 was an unreported media success that was not in need of “rescue” by privatisation.
It was performing robustly given the intense increase in competition it has faced over the past decade. Digital revenues were forecast to rise from £132 million in 2014 to £269 million in 2025.
Even if advertising revenues remained flat – instead of a projected annual growth rate of 3.2 per cent a year – because of Brexit, or any other cause, there would still be an extra £100 million a year a decade from now.
Channel 4 had managed to achieve the alchemy of turning analogue pounds into digital pounds, something that has continued to elude all but the most specialist newspapers. As a result the Channel was able to say confidently that it was completely indifferent on the issue of where its content was viewed.
Channel 4 has always been quick to take advantage of the latest technological opportunities – first VOD in 2006 and then last year the creation of All 4 bringing all of its content together online.
No less than 13.5 million people have registered for All 4 including half of all 16-34-years olds in the UK, the group that has been deserting conventional media in alarming numbers.
When combined with programmatic advertising Channel 4 has even been able to pump out relevant ads in real time.
Tait worries that newspapers have much less detailed information about their readers.”
The approach has even worked in news with 500 million views on Facebook of Channel 4 news videos, two thirds of them by consumers under the age of 35.
An independent analysis of the state of the Channel 4 business by consultants Ernst and Young found that when combined with the production of distinctive, high quality content, registration had been one of the keys to the organisation’s success.
Channel 4 knew about the demographics and interests of at least 13.5 million of its audience.
ITV has been doing something similar with ITV Hub and Sky, as a subscription business, has a line into more than 12 million UK homes.
The BBC has been very wary about collecting data about its licence payers because of the perceived threat that a future Government might use such a thing as an excuse to end the licence fee and move to subscription.
Even the BBC has now been forced to be more flexible in the face of “freeloaders” who haven’t paid a licence fee dipping into the BBC’s iPlayer – the media equivalent of health tourism.
From next year access to the iPlayer will require registration and a password.
Tait worries that by comparison newspapers have much less detailed information about their readers.
Successful editors, particularly at the tabloid end, have tended to boast about their institutive feel for the interests of their readers, even though it was often as scientific as water divining.
Many papers were bought at newsagents or at railway kiosks and in an age when media consumers appear to want a two-way relationship, the newspapers were largely in the dark about who their readers were.
Of course things are starting to change but only at the margins in terms of numbers. The Times knows who its subscribers are and targets them with offers and small treats.
The Guardian has its nascent membership scheme but the newspaper industry, even that part of its owned by major international industrial players, can offer nothing to match the achievement of a small public service broadcaster funded by advertising.
For Tait, the different online permutations tried by the newspaper industry from almost entirely free and advertising funded to subscription has been a distraction.
In the latest manoeuvre at the beginning of this month the Daily Telegraph decided to dump its metered paywall in favour of making most of its online offerings free. At the same time there would be a new premium subscription service that would include exclusive content for members.
Whatever approach individual titles pursue, it is registration that will make the difference, Tait believes.
Registration has to be combined with investment in distinctive video that has to be much more skilfully integrated in the online newspaper stream.
Tait, the quintessential telly man, is almost diffident about his modest proposals on how to save newspapers by showing how they can reconnect with their audiences.
“I cannot see too many ways in which they would make the current situation worse,” Tate concludes.
Lost For Words? How Can Journalism Survive the Decline of Print. Edited by John Mair, Tor Clark, Neil Fowler, Raymond Snoddy and Richard Tait. Published by Abramis, Bury St Edmunds – January 2017.
