CHANGING TV LANDSCAPE HEIGHTENS INTEREST IN TV MAGAZINES

NTVB Media releases Newspapers’ Guide to TV Magazines

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We’ve all been there, flipping through seemingly endless television listings. A minute goes by. Then two. Then three. Next, a 10-minute scroll and a difficult search through Netflix. And still nothing to watch.

The changing TV entertainment landscape has vexed many consumers. Indeed, 45.5 percent of people recently surveyed said they’d switch TV providers if a new service would simply help them find shows of interest. The study, conducted by TiVo, also found that 37.6 percent of respondents would like to retain access to the traditional grid.

“Sometimes I call watching TV my part time job,” a woman told PricewaterhouseCoopers in a 2014 study. It’s understandable. There were 1,500 new television shows in the Fall 2017 lineup, more than 500 of which were scripted. In comparison, there were just 87 scripted cable series in 2009.

“There’s so much great programming today and so many different ways to access it that it’s overwhelming a segment of the market,” said Michael Keever, SVP/CMO of NTVB Media, the nation’s leading TV magazine publisher. “This niche is looking for simple, trusted guidance with all of the new options available, and for a lot of people, a TV magazine meets their need.”

NTVB recently released a white paper called Newspapers’ Guide to TV Magazines. In it, the company asserts that a combination of new technologies, a radically changing television market, and an unprecedented shift in demographics have created newfound interest in TV magazines within the newspaper industry, which is increasingly focused on pleasing its remaining print subscribers. The white paper describes various business models that newspapers use to fulfill the need for a TV book and describes how those models affect circulation, revenue, operations, and profits. The white paper can be found at https://www.ntvbmedia.com/newspapers-guide-to-tv-magazines/.

According to NTVB’s Keever, almost all of the largest newspapers have chosen to outsource their TV magazine.

“We’ve rolled out TV Weekly in more than 180 markets over the past eight years and found that our audience consistently represents 8-12 percent of a paper’s overall circulation,” Keever said. “It’s a passionate and very vocal segment of a paper’s overall circulation, but still very much a niche audience. It’s why the majority of papers outsource to us – because we produce a superior product and support it with marketing, advertising and content programs, along with a 24/7 customer support center. They also appreciate that our model includes invoicing, which keeps costs for a TV book off of the newspaper bill.”