
Journalists and analysts from across the world discussed coming media trends at a June 27 international forum held at RIA Novosti’s press center.
The keynote speeches featured at the Future Media Forum dealt with topics such as basic ICT trends, the prospects of Internet technology-based services, interactive journalism, the media industry, and big data.
“The ability to work with digital information is clearly becoming a must for any media professional,” RIA Novosti Editor-in-Chief Svetlana Mironyuk said in her opening remarks.
News on the Runet
During the forum, experts from the RIA Novosti Research Center presented a new study showing that about 14% of Runet users prefer to read news on mobile devices, including Internet users in Russia who catch up on the news using smartphones (4%), tablets (4%) and netbooks (4%), and a further 2% using mobile phones. The study was conducted in 2013 among 2,082 online news readers aged between 18 and 54 living in cities with a population of 100,000 or more.
The majority of Russians (56%) read news on dedicated news resources, in second place (54%) are search engines (search results) and the third most popular option (50%) are social networks. The least popular options for Runet users for reading the news are city portals (7%) and RSS feeds (9%).
According to the Executive Director of the Center, Yelena Slinko, 89% of users spend up to an hour a day reading the news, of whom 63% spend about half an hour a day and 26% between 30 and 60 minutes. Only 11% spend more than an hour a day reading the news. Most respondents (95%) said they prefer to read the news at home or at work, with 75% of respondents reading the news at home and only 20% at work.
TV is here to stay
One of the forum’s panel discussions was devoted to the future of television given the rapid development of the Internet.
“It’s obvious, in my view, that TV news is losing its relevance,” TV journalist Pavel Sheremet said. ”There is scarce demand for classic news reports nowadays. By the evening, anyone who wants to will know about all the major news stories already. Shows that are nothing but small talk are also about to disappear from TV screens.”
RIA Novosti commentator Arina Borodina said that the three major federal TV channels in Russia – Channel One, Rossiya 1 and NTV – are watched daily by 60 million people. This means that television remains the most accessible, mass form of entertainment in Russia.
“If we are referring to television’s present, all talk about TV giving way to the Internet is not quite valid at this point, I think,” Borodina remarked. “But then again, the Internet doesn’t produce anything on its own; it only serves as a delivery vehicle.”
Borodina added that in Russia, audiences of some of the most popular TV shows often remain loyal for years.
“The traditional New Year’s Eve greetings by the Russian President and the Victory Day Parade, which is shown at 10 am on May 9, both have a huge audience of loyal viewers, accounting for about 50% of the total. The Victory Day Parade normally has the highest audience share for the television season,” she said, adding that the Eurovision contests also enjoy high ratings, with a global audience totaling some 130 million.
Speaking at the forum, Alexei Belyayev, head of the Internet Research Department of the Video International think tank, said that the number of TV screens per capita in Russia keeps growing, and smart TV technology is spreading fast.
“I don’t think any Russian analyst has offered a precise enough forecast of how fast smart TV will be advancing,” Belyayev said. “Its progress is much faster than we imagined, actually; it’s skyrocketing. We’re now talking about several million smart TV sets, with about 45% up and running.”
He said that around 15% of Russians who live in cities have access to broadband connection and digital TV at this point.
Alan Mutter, an US investor and consultant to media carriers, said that in the United States, cable television audiences are on the decline.
In the future, people will choose to watch video on the go rather than sitting in front of a fixed TV screen, Mutter said. According to the figures he cited, 77% of Americans now watch TV on a computer device (43% use smartphones and 34% use other devices).
Moderator Vasily Gatov, who heads the RIA Novosti Media Laboratory and sits on the IFRA Board, said television of the future will have more video content and the way in which information is presented will become more emotionally charged with time.
“The only thing we cannot ‘cut’ differently is time,” he said. “A person has only so much time for leisure; eight hours is the maximum, I think. Audiovisual content is taking up an increasingly large share of those eight hours, and it will soon be supplemented with personal video communications. The proportion of video will be on the rise.”
Working with data a must for media professionals
A new project is about to be launched in Russia to teach media professionals, as well as government officials and activists, to use open-source data, announced Ivan Begtin, director of the non-profit partnership Information Culture.
Speaking at the forum, he said that in Russia, the authorities remain reluctant to disclose data and that not all media professionals have the skills to correctly analyze that information anyway. As an example, he cited the Russian website on government contracts.
“A project is in the works in Russia aimed at teaching media professionals, along with government officials and activists, how to use such data,” Begtin said. He added that three Russian cities – Moscow, Krasnoyarsk and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk – already have open-source websites, but that the data posted there has not presented much interest so far.