The Impact of Television On Advertising Revenues and Circulations of Newspapers

Obviously absolute figures of TV sets do not provide satisfactory statistical evidence with regard to the development of TV in different countries. A better yardstick for this purpose is the "TV density", which can be expressed e.g. in the number of sets per I000 inhabitants or in the percentage of homes where sets are installed. But even this is a rather rough measurement.

The choice of statistical "units" will largely depend on the purpose of a given research-project. A realistic quantitative picture of the TV audience will also have to take into account "outdoor-viewing" and other viewing-habits (e.g. the number of hours spent on viewing), etc. For other purposes the "coverage" of a country by TV-stations, the number of separate programs etc. will be illustrative (See also page 3).

This does not necessarily mean that in each case the less favourable trend of Evenings' circulations has been caused by TV as a single dominant factor. For example in the USA the statistical evidence is not sufficient to warrant such a conclusion (See below).

It should be noted that there is a considerable difference between (independent) commercial TV (as in England) and the strictly limited scope of advertising by TV-public corporations (as in Germany and Italy). This difference has also a bearing on the scope and terms of competition between TV and the press, at least in theory. In practice the time-limit set for TV advertising in Italy has not been reached so far. Also TV advertising in Germany is still steeply rising.

As the figures for ads represent gross revenues, the following text often equates roughly the overall figures for all media with the national expenditure on publicity. Strictly speaking the latter includes of course also the costs (of production and distribution) at the advertiser's end (which costs do not appear under the media's gross revenues). See also our note under Appendix I.