Tv is Still Relevant

With the rise of the digital era, the media industry, especially print media, feels the blows the most. One by one, print media both locally and overseas starts to fall. The global public was shocked when the weekly magazine Newsweek ended its run. From then on, the list continues to grow.

Will the print media industry truly die? The survey results from 17,000 respondents in 11 big cities in Indonesia that Nielsen conducted called “The Moment of Truth for Print Media in Order to Grow” stated that there are still 4.5 million newspapers, magazine and tabloid readers. From that number, 83% or 3.7 million are newspaper readers. The reason for still choosing to read newspapers is because they deemed newspapers are more trustworthy.

“The element of trust on the contents will affect the ads inside,” Stated Helen Katherine, Nielsen’s Executive Director for Media Business. The existence of print media especially newspaper will be an important media for products that prioritizes unsure trust such as banks and insurance to advertise in. With this kind of profil, the existence of print media will still continue. The same goes for electronic media industry. When the digital disruption shakes the electronic media, specifically television, Nielsen’s survey actually indicates that ad expenditure allocation in television continues to grow. From 2011 – 2016, the accumulated ad expenditure has risen to 53%. Take for example the ad expenditure in 2016 that reached US$ 2.132 million. From that number, 63% or US$ 1.345 Million was allocated to the television industry.

Nielsen projects that the ad expenditure budget to the media industry will continue to grow as much as 6% per year until the year 2021, or valued at US$ 3.019 million. From that number, the majority or 60% or US$ 1.808 million are allocated to the electronic media, including TV. Nielsen’s survey results in various parts of the world show that the existence of digital TV and net entertainment channels have not fully replaced the existence of TV. The TV medium is used as the moment for families to gather.

In Australia, for example, around 84% of the people watch television for 3 hours 2 minutes at the minimum. In Denmark, around 81% of the people still watch TV together with live streaming gadget (20%). The same can be said with Holland where 83% of the people still watch television. Meanwhile, the Indonesia audience loves to watch TV together using gadgets such as handphones. From these facts, we can conclude that the existence of TV will still be strong even in the next five years.

“However, after these 5 years we need to watch out for the digital media resurrection,” Said the CEO of Dwi Sapta Group, Maya Watono. The penetration of digital media that currently is still at 44%, below TV at 96%, will shoot up along with the improvement in telecommunication infrastructure in Indonesia. That will be the moment when the digital media resurrection has the potential to disrupt the television market. This warning cannot be taken lightly by broadcast television industry players.