One year ago . . .

With the media-related news dominated by Katrina coverage, I thought I'd turn to something I do from time to time just for variety: look at what was happening in the media world one year ago. With that in mind, here are some interesting studies and statistics (from Benton's Communication Policy online service) that were surfacing around September 13 last year:

• Intruigingly, USA Today was noting that Wall Street may be tiring of corporate media mega-deals. It quoted one portfolio manager as saying "Enough is enough. . . . We keep waiting for the cash to come in. When it does, it seems they always have to make new growth acquisitions. And the real return to investors hasn't been that great.” Big media companies are largely mature, like utilities, so the argument goes. If mega-deals aren't paying off, it makes no sense for companies to keep using their cash to build even grander empires. There's also a realization that: a.) There's a media glut, and companies are saturating the market with so many movies, TV shows and music albums that it's hard to justify making many more; b.) New technologies make many investments risky. Noted Benton's Communication Policy Listserv:
  
  TV producers and distributors could see their economic models collapse if millions of viewers get digital video recorders, such as TiVo, and use them to skip ads. Radio stations are grappling with Internet and satellite rivals. Music companies watch anxiously as more consumers skip high-margin CD albums to buy low-margin download singles to feed their computers and iPods. Cable operators worry that satellite companies will poach more TV customers, while phone companies continue to cut prices to lure high-speed Internet subscribers. The competition will intensify if phone companies make good on threats to offer cable-like video, or if electric utilities offer broadband over power lines. Broadband, meanwhile, could evolve into a cheap, new distribution network for all kinds of media -- including pirated movies.
  
  
• Broadcasting & Cable was discussing a little-known segment of the media market called "Nevers": 20 million people who don't subscribe to cable or Pay-TV. Most of these people can afford to pay for TV, but either choose not to, or just don't watch TV at all. A recent survey of 385 TV-free families by Eastern Washington University professor Barbara Brock "found that more than two-thirds of them are headed by adults between 31 and 50 years old with two or more kids. More than half the parents had college degrees and earned a combined annual income greater than $60,000."
  
  
• With the Presidential election season in full swing, a Media Tenor/Media Channel study of the big three networks' nightly news over the first 6 months of 2004 found that less than 5% of campaign coverage was devoted to candidates' positions on the issues. According to one commentator on the study, "The bulk of the coverage focused instead on horse race politics, candidate sparring and campaign strategy, depriving Americans of meaningful information on important election-year issues." This study joined many others that showed news media coverage of the political races to be seriously lacking--especially by local television.
  
  
• Forrester Research released a study on the behavior of TV viewers using digital-video recorders (DVRs). DVR users apparently spend 60% of their TV time watching shows they've delayed or recorded. More worryingly for advertisers, they skip 92% of the ads under those conditions. Overall, ad exposure drops 54% among DVR users. Although the research did find that 75% of DVR users watch some ads at least sometimes (with movie ads and promotions for upcoming TV shows scoring highest) they watched fewer than 10% of ads about credit cards, long-distance carriers, car dealers or banks. DVRs were as of a year ago in about 5% of US homes; Forrester expects penetration to reach 41% by about 2009.