Right from foundation of Nigeria’s first newspaper, IWE IROHIN, till today, the Nigerian media has never been Research & Development driven. Perhaps, this has to do with the fact that journalism in Nigeria has a root in crusade. People set up newspapers or broadcast stations to fight a particular course and their economic survival depends on the patronage from believers in such crusades. That’s why media managers based their decisions on terms of content and establishment on assumptions, intuitions and presumptions. If we were to pay more attention to Research & Development in managing the media, I can tell you for free that there would be more distinctive emphasis on product differentiation to drive content and boost commercial success.
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Above was the comment of Yemi Ajayi, former Managing Editor of New Telegraph newspapers on June 18, 2018. He reacted to my article (on Facebook) with the title: Effect of PMB’s June 12 Proclamation On Print Newspaper Sales And Way Forward For The Practitioners.
Virtually, all the news magazines became the victims; they (The News, Tell, Newswatch, The Week, The Guardian, etc) disappeared from the newsstands. It will be recalled that these news magazines thrived under military but once military was gone, the magazines lost their ways. The press exhausted their arsenal in fighting the military regimes and became tired when democracy was earned. Magazines were not successful in making the transition from a military to a democratic one.
The power of the press was extremely much during the military regime; they produced news magazines that met the readers’ expectations. The military brought out the best in journalists and one can easily distinguish investigative journalism is different from features writing.
Readers patronized magazines during the military regime because of their in-depth analysis of the social, economic, political, etc developments in the country. These magazines made the citizens to see the military as a common enemy.
The news magazines competed favourably with the daily newspapers because these daily newspapers witnessed low sales on Mondays being the day the magazines hit the newsstands. In the early nineties, the magazines’ cover prices were N20.00 per copy. They made so much money from the copy sales and some corporate organisations capiterlized on the wide spread of the nmagazines and placed adverts. Readers and advertisers were glued to the magazines on a weekly basis. There were instances where big story editions sold out and the editions were reprinted, at times in a tabloid format. Killings in Anambra for business not Igbo nation agitation-Soludo
Often times, the entire print runs were seized by the government’s agents and readers were desperate to have copies of such editions. Because the market was already there, the magazines’ media managers embarked on guerilla journalism and did reprints.
In order to bridge the low sales’ gaps, some daily newspapers culled these magazines’ stories on Mondays because the magazines would have been delivered to the agents and distributors across the country on the preceding Sunday.
Immediately democracy was enthroned, the news magazines’ operators missed their tracks because there was no common enemy to be dealt with again, forgetting that they needed to interrogate the implementation of democratic government’s policies. All of a sudden, magazines were no longer found appealing by the readers especially when market was not being supplied with marketable, viable and relevant materials.
In order to survive, the magazines depended heavily on supplements from state & federal governments and some other agencies. In fact, some of these magazines produced a whole edition for the corporate clients.
Presently, newspapers are facing similar crises but are yet to learn from the woes that befell the news magazines. Most of these newspapers are dishing out tentative and uncertain contents that do not resonate with the target reading public. Some of today’s journalists are just waiting for someone high up there to make a very wild allegation and the next day, you see screaming headlines without any attempt to verify such claims.
Media firms need to invest heavily in research and development. If one produces a newspaper that can identify with readers’ desires, he can still sell a million copies in a day; it needs not rely on “hand-outs” from governments and corporate organizations because patronages from the readers who believe in their crusades would be enormous!
Sequel to the above, established media houses have to revisit and update their business plans often or they’ll fail to anticipate trends and challenges. A primary component of the business model is the value proposition. A company has to keep the business running until revenues exceed expenses.
Finally, over time, many businesses revise their business models from time to time, based on scientific findings, to reflect changing business environments and market demands. One way analysts and investors evaluate the success of a business model is by looking at the company’s gross profit. Gross profit is a company’s total revenue minus the cost of goods sold.
Abiola Ayankunbi is MD/CEO at AbingMO3 Marketing Management Consultancy
0802 305 1315
abiolaayankunbi@yahoo.com
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