Newsletter 24th of March: 2 Million Nordic Households Subscribe to a Digital Newspaper
NEWSLETTER
24 March 2021
The digital transformation of print media – news and magazines – has so far been a bit slower than what we’ve seen for audio and video. There are also variations in terms of how far digitalization has come between different text media categories. Mediavision follows this development closely and we see a market where overall digital subscriptions are increasing rapidly.
The Nordic news media market has, for quite some time, been struggling with a challenging combination of both decreasing ad revenues and high digitalization costs. However, when it comes to subscription revenues, digital growth has somewhat mitigated the decrease in print revenues. But as long as the cost for the printed edition remains (paper, print, distribution etc.), there are several forces in play offsetting the rewards of the digitalization.
Examining the total Nordic market, Mediavision analysis points at approx. 2 million households (17%) subscribing to a digital newspaper fall 2020. This can be compared to 2,4 million households paying for a printed newspaper subscription. Or, for that matter, 6,5 million households paying for a streaming video service.
Norway is taking the lead with 30% subscribing to a digital newspaper. A fairly high degree of subscriptions to digital tabloids is contributing. Sweden and Finland are lagging but still ahead of Denmark (8% of the households subscribing).
We can expect more initiatives from the media houses to further accelerate the digitalization of the newspaper industry. Likely, the tipping point is close for the traditional “paper” subscription as the cost of paper, printing and distribution simply makes subscription costs too high for most households.
Industry News
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