tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701910099870427419.post4134630227608972259..comments2011-03-03T00:10:25.933-08:00Comments on Rough Numbers: Newspaper Circulation Robert H. Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04754539699997933167noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701910099870427419.post-8216381294039595382009-11-25T20:45:53.466-08:002009-11-25T20:45:53.466-08:00Mr. Langeveld -
Thanks for your kind comments.
I...Mr. Langeveld -<br /><br />Thanks for your kind comments.<br /><br />I entirely agree that an accelerated decline is plausible for the reasons you mention. Indeed, it's worth noting (although I didn't for the sake of brevity) that the number of households in the U.S. headed by someone 55 or older was 43.0 million in 2007 according to U.S. Census Bureau data. This is remarkably close to current circulation numbers.<br /><br />Also, the annual number of deaths in the U.S. is about 2.4 million, so losing 1.4 million subscribing households per year due to subscriber "expirations" seems entirely plausible.<br /><br />Finally, what is most intriguing (to me at least) about the decline rates is that they don't appear to be following a logarithmic decay function, in which the annual loss is a fixed percentage of the beginning-of-year subscriber count. Instead, the decline seems to be following a more linear trend in both the raw subscription count and the per-household numbers. If this continues, the constant absolute decline will translate into an increasing percentage decrease, or the "bus plunge".Robert H. Heathhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04754539699997933167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701910099870427419.post-72641537764633909442009-11-25T07:28:47.655-08:002009-11-25T07:28:47.655-08:00Robert, this is an excellent analysis, great graph...Robert, this is an excellent analysis, great graphs. I think you are right about the numbers vs. Alan Mutter's extrapolation. <br /><br />I do think that in your final section projecting the decline of household penetration, an accelerated decline between the two projections is plausible, with a number of contributing factors:<br />- Prices for single copy and home delivery will be pushed up aggressively as papers continue to lose ads<br />- Demographics come into play: already the median age of print newspaper readers is around 60, and as that rises, the steady long-term decline of 1.4 percent gets accelerated by the death rate in the older age cohorts, with virtually no replacement in the younger ones<br />- Part of the current accelerated 10.6% decline is due to actual closings of newspapers, and there are likely to be more and more of those as the print model becomes less sustainable.Martin Langeveldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05745134335677178737noreply@blogger.com