Despite numerous boycott of mainstream media(MSM) on biased reporting, spinning news, and invisible hands manipulating at the back, why isn't MSM changed?
Many has misperception that media is relying on readership to survive. This is partly true.
If we look carefully into to media business, we will know that almost all media rely on advertising dollar to survive. And to get advertising dollar, they will have to convince the advertisers their command on readership, either sanctioned or not.
And many do not know, for example, the print media, is actually using advertising dollar to subsidize the selling price. This is to ensure that they are still in the competition. Several free print media operates entirely on advertising revenue such as the Sun.
Now you may ask, why media is not addressing to calls from the public to deliver unbiased information, and still continue to be sodomized by the power would be, and serving respective political masters, despite the fact that their readers are desperately wanted them to do otherwise.
The answer is simple: readership is important but it is not the factor that will affect the survival of media.
Give an example, the per copy price you pay for newspaper is probably subsidized almost 50% by advertising revenue. This means if the media is popular, it has to look for more advertising dollar to cover the subsidy.
On the other hand, media loves advertisers. Advertisers are the rice bowl for media and not you, the person on the street.
So if you want to send MSM a strong message, you should take away their rice bowl so that they will listen, else any effort to create awareness will have no impact on them, since they don't really care less about you, especially you are just one of the millions of readers.
How to take away their rice bowl?
First, you must continue buying as you did, instead of boycotting. This will of course maintain if not increase media circulation. On the other hand, this is also getting them to incur higher cost, since direct material cost such as newsprint and ink are two of the major costs for print media. The third major cost is logistic and distribution.
So help the person you hate to spend more, rather than spending less.
With higher circulation, they need to have more advertisers on board to pay their bills and pay on your behalf.
Now this is the fun part:
What you need to do is to tell advertisers that you will not buy their products if they advertise in the targeted media.
Yes, you may ask why should advertisers listen to you. The answer is simple: you are taking away the advertisers' rice bowl if they continue to advertise.
But how to effectively tell the advertisers? Simple, if you wanted to buy something, and you found that the merchant is advertising on targeted media, you either tell them off that you will not buy unless they stop advertising in targeted media. Call you telco for example to tell them that you are switching unless they withdraw their advertisements from targeted media.
This is not going to be an overnight success, but it will eventually forcing advertisers to stop paying media for their campaign since advertisement is no longer serving its purpose, ie induce sales but it actually hurt sales.
When advertisers starting to withdraw their advertisement support to the media, the media is then in a situation either to survive by listening to your call, or simply go bust as they cannot stay long in the business keep subsidizing while no advertising dollar.
So start from today, go get your copy of newspaper, then go thru the advertisements. If the merchant you are dealing with is supporting the paper, tell them you are switching and state the reason.
With concerted effort, you will eventually bring media to its knee unless they can find other funding.
Then tell media what you want them to do, they will then listen.
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