TV News Viewership Sinks...

More proof that major station TV - with their 1000's of employees - is heading to the end of the road...

I've written (again!) repeatedly about the demise of TV in Japan. Some people think that I mean that TV is going to disappear off the face of the earth forever. That is not the case. TV will be around for many more decades to come, I'm sure.

What won't be around for many more decades to come are these over-sized bloated TV networks that employ thousands of people.

Think about it: A TV station like TV Tokyo targets a very wide audience of ages from 6 ~ 86. TV Tokyo employs well over 1,000 people.

A station like Fashion TV in Tokyo targets 20 ~ 45 year old women.  Fashion TV employs about 40 people so their overhead is nowhere near as high as TV Tokyo.

Let's say you are a women's shoes manufacturer. Fashion TV targets your main audience. Yet their advertising rates are less than 1/20th the price of TV Tokyo. As a sponsor who wants a prime audience, do you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV Tokyo advertising, or do you specialize and only go for your core audience?

Of course, you go for the core audience.

Today, again, more data has come out on the quick collapse of TV. Specifically TV News.

Mashable reports:

In 2010, 65% of people younger than 30 cited the Internet as their go-to source for news, nearly doubling from 34% in 2007. The number who consider television as their main news source dropped from 68% to 52% during that time.

Of all 1,500 American adults surveyed, 41% say they get their national and international news from the Internet, up 17% from 2007. Sixty-six percent cite television — down from 74% — indicating the trend is spreading among other age groups.

Forty-eight percent of those 30-59 cite the Internet as their main news source, up from 32% in 2007, while television went down from 71% to 63%. Though the number of those in the 51-64 age group who consider television their main news source (71%) is about the same, those who turn to the Internet (34%) is nearly equal to the number who cite newspapers (38%). The amount of people 65 and older who get their news from the Internet has risen from 5% to 14%, but television remains the chief source for 79% of respondents. 

News is the bread and butter of television.  So, to extrapolate on the figures above... If 65% of all people younger than 30 cite the Internet as their main news source - and TV is losing money now - what's going to happen in 10 years?

Like I said, there will always be TV stations... But the day of the hugely staffed stations is soon coming to an end.