Ten Years Ago... Will Investment in Internet Pay Off?

Speculating in Cyberspace: Will It Pay Off?
[SOURCE: Washington Post 1/23/1997, AUTHOR: Richard Harwood]
Can traditional media retain their audiences and advertising support in the mysterious new world of "cyberspace"? By the end of 1995, more than 152,000 commercial web sites had been registered as Internet addresses. At that time, commercial sites were being added at the rate of 2,000 a week, suggesting that as of January 1997 more than 250,000 sites were on the Net. One explanation for the intense and unprecedented interest of the media in this new technology was the simple fact that media companies were promoting their own financial interests. They were and are big investors in the Internet partly out of the single-minded hope for financial gain and partly out of fear of the future. These fears were not groundless, especially fears about audience shrinkage. The Radio and Television News Directors Foundation commissioned a study by Princeton Survey Research Associates in 1996 that delivered bad news. Historically, interest in "news" increases with age -- older people are the biggest consumers, younger people show the least interest. In 1980, the Princeton people reported, 53 percent of the people over 65 watched the evening news broadcasts on the three big networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC. In 1995 it was 38 percent. Comparable declines were recorded in every age group. The figures suggested, among other things, that young people today are not developing a "habit" for network news. Some of this decline was attributed to competition from cable news channels and from local news broadcasts. But there is no doubt that young people were developing habits unfavorable to traditional news suppliers.
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