The lady doth protest a heckuva lot
: CNN rounds up all the big-buck advertising campaigns old media are undertaking to try to change their image. Methinks that changes in the products will say more than any ad campaign.
To be sure, newspapers, radio and magazines still control roughly half of the $180 billion-plus U.S. advertising market. But their growth rates are among the slowest of all major media, causing concerns that they will lose out to the faster-growing Internet and cable television in the long run.
Kimball and his radio and magazine counterparts see the image makeovers as a way to shed their industries’ reputation for stodginess and to refute the impression that their industries are doomed by new technologies.
Radio, for instance, is touting its move toward high-definition radio. The industry is also embracing a popular new practice called “podcasting,” in which users can download popular radio shows onto their computer hard drives or a portable device.
Newspaper and magazine publishers are looking to tap digital technologies for new revenues streams, including providing content to cell phones and other wireless devices.
Newspapers, criticized for failing to see the revenue potential of online job searches and other forms of classified advertising, are taking business risks now that they never did before, said Kimball.
