Traditional revival

The success of the RTÉ programme Rip Off Republic and a rise in London newspaper sales in the aftermath of the 7 July attacks shows that traditional media still has an important place in the market.

Every so often, just as traditional media practitioners are about to consign themselves to the dustbin of history in the face of web-based rivals, something happens to reaffirm their relevance when the chips are down – when people really want to know what's going on.

Two instances to hand over recent weeks represent this very well, proving that when the content of traditional media is relevant and when there is a need for premium-grade information, they can still be king of the block.

The first is Eddie Hobbs's Rip Off Republic series on RTÉ1 television, the big broadcast surprise of the summer. Conventional wisdom is that TV audiences must drop in August. Substitute programming has to be prepared to facilitate the "stars" as they head for vacation destinations. And sure enough, audiences drop, as viewers realise they are being fed re-heated stuff from the freezers out the back at Montrose, interspersed with the odd Bruce Willis movie.

But Hobbs's first programme drew an astonishing 530,000 viewers – and on a warm Monday evening at that. The figures for the second programme passed the 600,000 mark – as word spread that something new was happening. At first blush it hardly makes sense. An agitated Cork man, his arms flailing like a windmill, harangues an audience from the stage of the Helix about the price of drink... and houses... and cars... and cement... and... you name it!

Yet Eddie Hobbs and Rip Off Republic are the talk of the Irish summer. He features in the tabloids on a daily basis. He is the subject of animated conversations in pubs, supermarkets and at dinner-tables. He is threatened on anyone providing a poor service or shoddy goods by emboldened customers who believe they have a new champion on their side. Not too many people believed that RTÉ television would actually commission this sort of stuff for the dog-days of August.

The second instance of resurgence in traditional media has been in Britain, in the aftermath of the July terrorist attacks. With London reeling, with large-scale disruption to public life and with widespread fear and confusion among the population, there has been a marked turn back to newspapers and a surge in sales among the biggest-selling up-market dailies.

The largest gain has not been among the morning titles but at London's Evening Standard, the capital's sole evening newspaper. In June the Standard had dropped more than 12 per cent circulation, year-on-year. But July saw sales rise by almost four per cent year-on-year to 372,955.

The Standard's Managing Director, Mike Anderson, has little doubt about the cause-and-effect relationship between the circulation spike and the news agenda. Quoted in the UK Press Gazette he said: "The Evening Standard is an iconic London brand. From the euphoria of winning the Olympic bid to the outrage of the terrorist attacks... there has been a huge appetite for news over the last month and all our editions have been flying from the newsstands. We are delighted but not surprised that at such a significant time Londoners have turned to The Evening Standard to keep them in touch with the latest developments."

There can be little doubt that the resurgence is news-led. The Standard is a dull, predictable paper, reflecting all of the flaccidity of its monopoly status. Dublin's Evening Herald sparkles by comparison.

Significant rises in sales in July were also reported by The Times and The Daily Telegraph. The Times saw its sales rise by 7.32 per cent year-on-year to 698,043 sales. As with the Evening Standard, the Times's editor, Robert Thomson, attributed the increase to buyers' appreciation of "traditional journalistic values during a time of crisis."

The Daily Telegraph was up year-on-year in July although it continues to fall well short of the symbolic one million sales mark at 912,319. Again, the Telegraph group believes that the July rise reflected the demand by readers for "accurate and informed coverage".

The real significance of these gains – however temporary they may be – can only be appreciated against a background of dropping circulation over recent years for most of Britain's serious newspapers. The Guardian, for example, is now selling just over 350,000 copies, its lowest figure for more than 25 years. Industry-watchers are awaiting its re-launch in September, with what is expected to be a major editorial and promotional blitz.

What the UK newspaper resurgence and the response to Rip Off Republic confirm is that media that are content-led can grow and be in demand even in a market-place increasingly crowded with web-based products. Moreover, they confirm that paid-for products can gain market-share even against competition from products that are free-to-air or without cover charge.

Traditional news media have to cling to two concepts for success in this environment. The first is relevance. In a consumer-defined world, media find it increasingly difficult to be relevant unless they focus on material gain and personal wellbeing. Hence, the hordes of successful programmes and supplements focusing on property, cars, health, travel and so on. Eddie Hobbs's Rip Off Republic fits perfectly into that template – with added attitude.

The second concept is to maintain investment. In a world where many commodities get cheaper, cheap news may have an attractivness for cost-accountants. Celebrity gossip, horoscopes and tales about footballers' wives are significantly less expensive to generate than hard news. But when young Muslim men from the North of England become suicide-bombers in central London, the sort of information that people need and seek out does not come cheap.

When crises occur, the traditional news media come into their own. People turn back to trusted information suppliers. So the serious London newspapers and RTÉ's advertising department get a bit of an uplift. I fear and suspect, nonetheless, that these are temporary phenomena. They will be replaced, once – if – "normality" is restored by further series of Big Brother and cheap web-sites, functioning on the fringes of coherence.

Conor Brady is Editor Emeritus of The Irish Times. He is a senior teaching fellow at the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business UCD where he lectures in modern media