Media Insider: Media Confidence Hits Record Low, Publishers See Record Amazon Prime Day Sales
Welcome to Media Insider, PR Newswire’s roundup of media stories from the week.
Americans’ confidence in media hits record lows: Gallup
The Hill | Zach Schonfeld
Americans’ confidence in two facets of the news media — newspapers and television news — has fallen to all-time lows, according to a new Gallup poll. The poll found that just 16% of respondents had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers, the first time on record that the measure has fallen below 20%, while 11% had the same degree of confidence in television news. Both figures are down 5 percentage points since last year. Confidence levels are also split along partisan lines, with confidence among Democrats low but still higher than among Republicans and independents.
Read next: Journalism job seekers are feeling the squeeze of the job market.
Publishers see record Amazon Prime Day sales
Digiday | Sara Guaglione
Despite unstable macroeconomic conditions and historic inflation in the U.S., many publishers had record Amazon Prime Day sales compared to previous years. The reasons for this, according to publishers’ heads of commerce — from companies including Hearst, Leaf Group, Future, USA Today’s Reviewed and The New York Times’ Wirecutter — are twofold: consumers are looking to save money on deals as prices around them creep up, and publishers are getting smarter about how they handle their content strategy and data insights around Prime Day. Publishers can make money from Amazon Prime Day through an affiliate marketing model, where they get a commission from Amazon from sales driven through links and ads on their sites. The commission rates differ based on the product category.
ICYMI: T Magazine launches a travel-focused newsletter, “T Wanderlust.”
Byron Allen buys Black News Channel for $11M
Hollywood Reporter | Alex Weprin
Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group is buying the Black News Channel, with plans to revive the bankrupt cable news outlet and significantly grow its distribution footprint. Allen’s company is acquiring “substantially all” of BNC’s assets for $11 million, with a bankruptcy court in Tallahassee, Florida, formally signing off on the sale. BNC is available in about 45 million homes through companies like Comcast, Charter and DirecTV, and Allen says his company can grow that distribution to about 80 million homes in the next six months. It’s not immediately clear, however, what Allen has in store for BNC’s lineup or programming.
In more acquisition news: Business media company Industry Dive has signed an agreement to be acquired by Informa.
Bloomberg Media plots global expansion
Axios | Sara Fischer
Bloomberg Media is planning a major expansion into localized coverage of different regions around the world. The company is beginning to assess markets with relatively high GDPs and areas where it has an existing footprint, including France, Germany, Japan, Malaysia and parts of Africa, beginning this year. The idea is to strengthen the company’s commercial opportunities in places where Bloomberg Media already has an existing footprint by creating customized versions of existing products, and some news ones, tailored to each region. This approach will depend heavily on investments in technology, including tech that can translate some of its global coverage to local audiences using voiceovers and digital text translations.
Also from Axios: Money is making money again.
Newspaper group launches campaign to support Journalism Competition and Prevention Act
MediaPost | Ray Schultz
Hundreds of local and regional newspapers have launched an ad campaign to support the passage of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA). The bill was introduced last year, but is not moving fast enough to suit the Media Alliance. The group urges Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John Kennedy (R-LA) and Reps. David Cicilline (D-RI) and Ken Buck (R-CO) to mark up the bill, which they say will level the playing field between tech companies and publishers, and drive passage in both Houses of Congress. The campaign instructs readers on how to contact their members of Congress to ask them to move forward on a markup for JCPA. A QR code links to a page where readers can send emails and includes a phone number for constituents to call their representatives directly.
On the publishing front: HarperCollins union workers went on a one-day strike for increased wages, benefits and diversity.
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Maria Perez is director of web operations at Cision. In her spare time, she enjoys gaming, watching too much TV, and chasing squirrels with her dog Cece.
