Almost all markets we cover in the Digital News Report survey have seen a decline in the use of offline news sources in the last decade. Printed newspapers, radio, and television have all experienced double-digit falls since 2013 in the proportion who say they use them for news on a weekly basis.

As can be seen in Section 3 of this report (Analysis by Country and Market) the picture is broadly consistent across countries with markedly different media systems. Taking just four examples – Brazil, Japan, the UK, and the USA – we can see that newspapers, television, and radio have all seen large declines. And as we document in the Executive summary, even online news websites and apps have seen modest declines, leaving social media and video networks to emerge as the most widely used source, even in markets where they have not experienced growth in recent years.

These trendlines provide an essential guide to changes in news audience behaviour. However, on their own, they have little explanatory power. In short, they tell us how the size of an audience has changed, but they say little about the processes that undermine or sustain that audience.

Why are traditional sources in decline? Why are some traditional sources – like newspapers – declining at a faster rate than, say, television news? Is it because certain sources struggle to attract users in the first place? Or is it perhaps that they are more vulnerable to existing users turning away from them?

These are essential questions for media companies across the world that are still in the process of navigating the digital transition, as offline income still accounts for a substantial part of overall revenues. And they beg further questions for publishers. For example, might it be better for some companies to prioritise retaining existing audiences rather than fruitlessly trying to attract newer, younger ones if new audience recruitment is fundamentally very difficult to do?

Read the full article about television, newspapers, and radio losing their audiences by Dr. Richard Fletcher at Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.