Plan: Why and with what success are traditional media institutions adapting to the challenges posed by new/digital media?

Focusing on News Corporation

What does this question mean? 
1. How has Murdock changed his strategy to make News Corp dominate online.
2. What has News Corp done to remain in hierarchy despite of the changes in new and digital media (how has Murdoch remained competitive)

Introduction

• Define what is ment by traditional media and what is new and digital media (giving examples)
• State a clear argument - Are traditional media institutions adapting to the challenges posed by new/digital media or are they failing to remain in hierarchy because of this digital evolution? 
• Give a brief outline about News Corporation which would state that I will be focusing on this media institution.

Agreeing with the question

Paragraph one

 Focus on The Sun+

• Print media must conform to this digital evolution into to make their products successful in society.
• Print institutions need to make sure that their consumers are happy with their online content in order to maintain their readership figures.
• Example: The Sun Newspaper
• Largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the UK
• January - June 2012 on average it had 7.3 million readers - 34% ABC1 / 64% C2DE demographic.
• Murdock - adapting to this digital age - introduced Sun+  (August 2013) available for individuals to access smartphone apps etc.
• He is still successful through the pay wall.
• BBC article quote about The Sun+ pay wall.
• Sun+ offers videos of all premier league goal videos appeal to the male audience/ includes a page3 link as well.
• Subscribers cost - £2
• App Price - 69p
• The Sun Ipad editon - £4.99
• Adapt to new/digital media can be seen through the variety of features.

Paragraph 2

Digital Time

• Guardian Article - subscribers rose  by 7.5% (2012) between September and January.
• 35% are reading the news on their tablets.
• Access The Times and The Sunday Time - £1 per day or £2 for a week to access both.
• Subscription depends on which 'pack' the audiences' are interested in. 'The Web Pack' - cost £2 per week and 'The Digital Pack' - £299 with a free Nexus 7 for 18month.
• Primary audience - ABC1 middle class.
• Ipad and Android edition of The Times.

Paragraph 3

• State Murdock's quote about technology shifting power away from editors.
• The Sunday Times Ipad app was named the newspaper app of the year at the 100 newspaper.
• BBC article - online news has become easier to sell. This is because, consumers are willing to pay.
• Digital payment has become norm - offer exclusive news which would not be available on a print copy.
• Guardian article - 2013 55% of adults use the internet to read  or download content from the newspaper.
• News online has caused a decline in most newspapers/magazine.

Paragraph 4

• Audience no longer have to reply on traditional media - UGC (interact with the online edition) / citizen journalism/ empowerment of the audience. 
• April 2012 Murdock stated " Apple's Ipad may well be saving the newspaper industry"
• However - Murdock stragedy of increasing the pay wall in order to adapt the challenges of new/digital media caused problems.
• Guardian Article - Times pay wall went up there was a massive decline in traffic. - The Times almost lost 90% of its online readership. This shows that Murdock is adapting to this new and digital evolution however it s hard to remain in hierarchy and maintain wealth if consumers are unhappy with the price.
• Murdock purchased Myspace for $million which was one of the companies first major internet purchase.
• April 2008 Facebook overtook Myspace in the rankings. 

Conclusion.

• Summaries my argument
• To what extent I agree with this statement and why.