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News Industry Market Size
The estimated market size of the news industry in the U.S. is about $57.8 billion and the estimated market share that news apps occupy of the total U.S. news industry is about 1%.
Market Size of the News Industry
- The estimated annual revenue per news radio station in the U.S. is $20,913,000.
- There are 26 all-news radio stations in the U.S.
- The estimated annual revenue for news radio is $543,738,000.
- Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC have a combined annual revenue of $4,988,000,000.
- CNBC and Fox Business and Bloomberg have a combined annual revenue of $1,252,400,000.
- Univision has an annual revenue of $3,016,400,000.
- The total estimated revenue for cable news is $9,256,800,000
- NPR (National Public Radio) has an annual revenue of $232,800,000, PRI (Public Radio International) has an annual revenue of $18,100,000, and APM (American Public Media) has an annual revenue of $168,000,000.
- The total estimated revenue for public radio is $488,900,000.
- There are 830 local TV stations that are considered "news-producing stations" in the U.S. with a total annual revenue of $14.1 billion.
- Newspapers earned $16,476,453,084 in advertising revenue and $11,211,011,020 in circulation revenue.
- The total estimated revenue for U.S. newspapers is $27,687,464,104.
- Revenue for digital newspaper advertising is $5.4 billion.
- The annual revenue for all apps in the U.S. is about $20 billion.
- News apps have about a 1.94% share of the most popular apps in the Apple App Store.
- Assuming news apps have about the same share of the overall app market, the annual revenue for news apps would be about $388,000,000.
- The total approximate market size of the U.S. news industry is 57,794,902,104
Market Share of News Apps
- According to the above estimates, news apps earn approximately $388 million in annual revenue in the U.S.
- The U.S. news industry has a market size of about $57,794,902,104.
- Therefore, the U.S. news app industry has a market share of approximately 1%.
Research Strategy
We attempted to find the market size of the news industry in the U.S. by first looking for directly available statistics in market research reports from sources such as Grandview Research, IBISWorld, Pew Research, and more. Unfortunately, there were no consolidated numbers. Instead, there were only market sizes for different segments of the news industry such as newspapers, newspaper publishing, automotive news, entertainment and media, and digital advertising. However, the Pew Research "State of the Media" report for 2018 provided the revenues for several segments, so we decided that in the absence of a single consolidated market size, we would add the various segments in the Pew report together. This provided us with the annual revenues for radio news, cable news, local TV news, public radio news, and newspapers. We were still missing the market sizes for digital news and news apps. The Pew report provided information on digital news, but not the revenue, as the only statistics it provided was on overall digital advertising revenue rather than revenue specific to digital news.
A report from MarketingCharts provided us with the digital newspaper advertising and since we assumed that the major cable news networks' digital advertising was already included in their overall revenues, we would use the digital newspaper advertising revenue as a proxy for the digital news market size. Finding the news app market was more difficult. We searched through market research reports such as the ones mentioned above, app reports from sources like BusinessofApps, App Annie, FindingApps.com, and more. The total app market size was found in one of these reports, but nothing about the market share of news apps. As a third attempt, we searched business articles from sources like Wired, Forbes, Inc, and more to see if any of them had reported on the news app market share or revenue. In the end, the only helpful statistic we found was that that news apps represented 1.94% of the most popular apps on the Apple Store. Due to the lack of available information on this topic, we elected to use the 1.94% as a proxy for the news app market size. We assumed that news apps represent about 1.94% of all apps; therefore, they also represent about 1.94% of total app revenue.
Then, to find the news app market share of the overall news industry in the U.S., we divided the approximate news app revenue by the approximate total news industry revenue to triangulate a 1% market share.
Calculations
The Pew Research Center State of the Media 2018 report provided the annual revenue per radio news station, which was $20,913,000. The report also indicated there are 26 all-news radio stations in the United States, meaning news radio stations have an estimated annual revenue of $543,738,000 ($20,913,000 x 26).
Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC have a combined annual revenue of $4,988,000,000 and CNBC and Fox Business and Bloomberg have a combined annual revenue of $1,252,400,000. Univision has an annual revenue of $3,016,400,000. This totals $9,256,800,000 in revenue for cable news ($4,988,000,000 + $1,252,400,000 + $3,016,400,000 = $9,256,800,000).
NPR (National Public Radio) has an annual revenue of $232,800,000, PRI (Public Radio International) has an annual revenue of $18,100,000, and APM (American Public Media) has an annual revenue of $168,000,000. This totals $418,900,000 for public radio news ($232,800,000 + $18,100,000 + $168,000,000 = $418,900,000).
The report indicated that there are 830 local TV stations that are defined as "news-producing stations." This segment of the news industry had an annual revenue of $14.1 billion.
Newspapers earned $16,476,453,084 in advertising revenue and $11,211,011,020 in circulation revenue for a total of $27,687,464,104 in revenue ($16,476,453,084 + $11,211,011,020 = $27,687,464,104).
App revenue from all apps in the U.S. is $20 billion. According to analysis by AppLikeySolutions, the news category only represents 1.94% of the apps in the Apple Store. If that also represents the percentage of overall app revenue that news apps receive, then the market size for news apps is $388,000,000 ($20,000,000,000 x 1.94%).
Approximate total revenue for the news industry is calculated as the following:
$543,738,000 (radio news) + $9,256,800,000 (cable news) + $418,900,000 (public radio news) + $14,100,000,000 (local TV news) + $27,687,464,104 (newspapers) + $5,400,000,000 (digital news) + $388,000,000 (news apps) = 57,794,902,104.
Market share for news apps: $388,000,000 / $57,794,902,104 = 0.0067 or about 1%.