Print beats TV - on the Internet

The Internet community prefers the online offshoots of magazines and newspapers to TV or portal websites. The VDZ Association of German Magazine Publishers surveyed 700 Internet users; they rated print websites ahead of comparable offerings from TV stations or Internet portals in all criteria. On average, the print offshoots are eight percent ahead of TV websites and eleven percent ahead of portal websites. "The high editorial quality must also be reflected in higher advertising prices. This is the only way to refinance the personnel- and cost-intensive editorial Internet offerings in the long term," concludes Alexander von Reibnitz, Managing Director Digital Media at VDZ, from the results of the study. Publishers' news portals benefit particularly strongly from the positive image of the parent brand: the good reputation of the offline offering is rated positively by 72 percent of those surveyed for print offshoots, while TV offerings only achieve values of 55 percent here. However, this image transfer can also have its pitfalls: Many online editorial offices function almost independently of the printed paper. However, this differentiation is apparently not usually transparent to readers.