50 Distribute and Be Damned
UK (as it is, indeed, in the United States). For example, by cherry-picking
statistics, it would be possible to present the entire British news industry
as being in decline since 1951, when the News of the World was the
largest ever selling newspaper with some 8.4 issues being bought every
week.
44
Such a narrow view ignores the massive changes that took place
over the next 50 years as a greater number of Sunday and weekend titles
were launched, increasing the overall number of readers that were, in
turn, divided between those titles. Similarly, it is far from the case that
fewer people read the news: Feedspot tracks the top 50 news titles in the
UK, ranking them according to social media followers, with top sites including the BBC (over 45 million Facebook fans and more than 9 million
Twitter followers), The Guardian (nearly 8 million Facebook fans, over
7 million Twitter followers), and the Mail Online (14.5 million fans,
218,000 followers) in May 2018.
45
Similarly, Comscore ranked the BBC
in the top three sites visited in the UK with nearly 41 million unique visitors each month, a reach of more than 83 per cent of the population and
only behind Google (46.6 million) and Facebook (42.6 million), while
legacy news titles such as Mail Online (29 Million), The Guardian (22.2
million), and The Telegraph (20.7 million) also made to the top 20. Such
numbers far outstrip traditional circulations (2.6 million for the Daily
Mail at its height in 1961, which was actually half that of its main rival at the time, the Daily Express), and yet they have not brought the
rewards typically associated with massive readerships: vastly improved
advertising revenues.
Advertising and Disruption
The rise of Craigslist offers one example of the power of disruption in
legacy media practices, in this case advertising. Craigslist, founded in
1995 by Craig Newmark, has now been around so long that an article
by Mac Ryan in 2017 for Forbes magazine referred to it as an “online dinosaur”,
46
something that is not often said about Amazon, set up a year
earlier. Actually, while Craigslist may indeed be itself ripe for disruption,
it is useful to consider the history of media advertising to understand the
significance of changes that have taken place in consumption practices
over the past two decades.
Beard notes that the typical observation that our conceptions of advertising and branding date from the turn of the twentieth century is a false
one, and that earlier histories – far from being irrelevant – may demonstrate how promotional practices among the ancient Greeks, Romans,
Chinese, and even Mesopotamian cultures convey a sense of status and
power as well as the quality of goods.
47
While that may be true, we shall
limit ourselves here to a more conventional understanding of advertising from the end of the nineteenth century insofar as it represented a
disruption of consumption practices in the media. As Catherine Harbor
UK (as it is, indeed, in the United States). For example, by cherry-picking
statistics, it would be possible to present the entire British news industry
as being in decline since 1951, when the News of the World was the
largest ever selling newspaper with some 8.4 issues being bought every
week.
44
Such a narrow view ignores the massive changes that took place
over the next 50 years as a greater number of Sunday and weekend titles
were launched, increasing the overall number of readers that were, in
turn, divided between those titles. Similarly, it is far from the case that
fewer people read the news: Feedspot tracks the top 50 news titles in the
UK, ranking them according to social media followers, with top sites including the BBC (over 45 million Facebook fans and more than 9 million
Twitter followers), The Guardian (nearly 8 million Facebook fans, over
7 million Twitter followers), and the Mail Online (14.5 million fans,
218,000 followers) in May 2018.
45
Similarly, Comscore ranked the BBC
in the top three sites visited in the UK with nearly 41 million unique visitors each month, a reach of more than 83 per cent of the population and
only behind Google (46.6 million) and Facebook (42.6 million), while
legacy news titles such as Mail Online (29 Million), The Guardian (22.2
million), and The Telegraph (20.7 million) also made to the top 20. Such
numbers far outstrip traditional circulations (2.6 million for the Daily
Mail at its height in 1961, which was actually half that of its main rival at the time, the Daily Express), and yet they have not brought the
rewards typically associated with massive readerships: vastly improved
advertising revenues.
Advertising and Disruption
The rise of Craigslist offers one example of the power of disruption in
legacy media practices, in this case advertising. Craigslist, founded in
1995 by Craig Newmark, has now been around so long that an article
by Mac Ryan in 2017 for Forbes magazine referred to it as an “online dinosaur”,
46
something that is not often said about Amazon, set up a year
earlier. Actually, while Craigslist may indeed be itself ripe for disruption,
it is useful to consider the history of media advertising to understand the
significance of changes that have taken place in consumption practices
over the past two decades.
Beard notes that the typical observation that our conceptions of advertising and branding date from the turn of the twentieth century is a false
one, and that earlier histories – far from being irrelevant – may demonstrate how promotional practices among the ancient Greeks, Romans,
Chinese, and even Mesopotamian cultures convey a sense of status and
power as well as the quality of goods.
47
While that may be true, we shall
limit ourselves here to a more conventional understanding of advertising from the end of the nineteenth century insofar as it represented a
disruption of consumption practices in the media. As Catherine Harbor