Abiola Ayankunbi
This is not the best of time for those that are saddled with the responsibilities of managing newspaper companies in Nigeria. Although, this is not applicable to the media firms only; it is just that the business environment is not conducive enough for any business to thrive. The firms’ sources of income have dried up. Strategic plans that made sense many years ago now need serious review.
The challenges facing the newspaper industry worldwide are enormous; notably low sales, poor advert patronage, migration to online, breaking news/time factor, losing revenue to other media, oral tradition, declining in purchasing power, generalised contents, near sameness in nearly all publications, low readership and changing readership demographics. With no exception, all newspapers are experiencing either dwindling or stagnated growth in both copy and space revenue.
The newspaper industry has always been cyclical, and the industry has weathered previous storms. But while television’s arrival in the 1950s presaged the decline of newspapers’ importance as most people’s source of daily news, the explosion of the internet in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century increased the panoply of media choices available to the average reader while further cutting into newspapers’ hegemony as the source of news. Both television and the Internet bring news to the consumer faster and in a more visual style than newspapers, which are constrained by their physical form and the need to be physically manufactured and distributed.
It is ironic that this once powerful industry is declining! Circulation figures are crumbling and advertising revenue is dropping progressively. Unfortunately, the newspapers’ online editions are just the same like the hard copies because of the same contents. The media industry in Nigeria is therefore caught in the web of great depression and recession. There is a problem of a dispossessed economic environment, which has reduced the purchasing power of the reading public. It must be recalled that the cost of production has increased to an almost unmanageable level based on the fact that virtually every input required for production is imported from abroad. Foreign exchange fluctuation is very scary.
Unfortunately, majority of media managers seems not prepared for the huge task ahead of them. Cost of running the enterprise keeps soaring and it is becoming difficult to cross the red lines! Some newspapers’ future will surely hang in the balance if objectivity is not playing a pivotal role while determining news items listed for publication.
On the ground that media managers have refused to do things differently, they should not expect any better results. Publishers should therefore bury their egos and consider merger otherwise all of their publications may go into extinction earlier than expected since all of them publish nearly the same news items on a daily basis. Their sources of information are not different. Many people believed that Banks in Nigeria cannot merge, yet, they did. This has made them to be better than how they were before now.
On this note, media managers must run the enterprise as a business venture. Regrettably, the level of some media firms’ indebtedness arising from litigations, obligations like dues, rents, etc can rock the foundation of the firms or bring an abrupt end to their existence. It is a statement of fact that newspapers have moved rapidly from a season of prosperity to dwindling fortunes. While most of the outfits are on life support machines, some of them are just struggling very hard to survive.
Conclusively, some people who are managing media houses are not “genuine business persons” but “core journalists.” Media managers should operate as a good medical Doctor who, armed with the case story of his patient, comes out with far reaching solution and not antidote for problem suspension.
Abiola Ayankunbi is Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer at AbingMO3 Marketing Management Consultancy.
0802 305 1315
abiolaayankunbi@yahoo.com
