New Study Suggests ‘Subscription Fatigue’ Is Overstated When it Comes to News

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As streaming services have become more widespread, there have been concerns that the bounty of choices may negatively affect news organizations — leading to a situation in which consumers, overwhelmed by “subscription fatigue,” will opt for Netflix instead of their local newspaper.

But a new study suggests, among other things, that those who shell out for Netflix, Hulu, Spotify and other services are still willing to pay for news — in fact, they may be more likely to do so. Researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication found that those who pay for subscriptions to entertainment services also tend to spend money on subscriptions to local and national news outlets.

This is an important finding as newspapers become more dependent on subscriptions over advertising, a shift that has taken place in recent years as advertising revenue has declined precipitously.

The researchers — who collaborated with the News Media Alliance and the Minneapolis Star Tribune — surveyed nearly 500 Minnesota residents about their media budgets. On average, households surveyed had four digital media subscriptions, including about one news subscription — and reported paying about $600 annually for news.

In actuality, however, that number was closer to $700 per year, a positive sign, according to Rebecca Frank, vice president of research and insights at the News Media Alliance, which commissioned the study. “That suggests to me that they see value in what they’re paying for, and they aren’t feeling they pay for more than they get,” she told Mediaite.

The paper also found that those who pay for local news are more likely to have a subscription to a national news outlet — 33 percent of Star Tribune subscribers, the study revealed, also subscribed to a major newspaper like The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Additionally, the paper revealed that consumers are willing to pay more for sports content as well as music.

According to Frank, such findings have implications for newspapers around the country. For example, she said, the study could be instructive for some outlets that want to develop sports-based subscription packages — a strategy that has worked well for The Athletic, the subscription-based website that exclusively covers local sports around the country.

“The goal,” she explained, “was to get a sense for how consumers budget for these subscriptions so news publishers can better understand how paying for information and entertainment impacts different audiences.”

Despite the study’s somewhat promising findings for new organizations, they may not be applicable to outlets that exist outside of Minnesota, according to Nikki Usher, a media scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s College of Media.

Minnesota’s Hennepin County, which is served by the Star Tribune, is one of the only places in the United States to have added journalists over the past decade or so, Usher said, and the area also has an above-average rate of civic engagement, which could lead residents to be unusually devoted to news. “I think that it’s a really important study,” Usher told Mediaite. “It tells us some things about one market that I would be really hesitant about extending.”

Dan Kennedy, an associate professor at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism, told Mediaite he wasn’t surprised that services like Netflix and Spotify might help lower the resistance to paying for news — and that the Times and the Post seem to have benefitted from this.

But the real challenge for media outlets, he said, will be at the regional and local level. “Although The Boston Globe, to name one example, has done well with digital subscriptions and has reported that it is at least marginally profitable, the nationalization of politics and culture puts local media at a disadvantage.”

In terms of future research, Frank said that she would like to look outside of Minnesota to see how consumer habits differ among geographic markets. “More data will also help us understand how publishers can set prices and develop products unique to their home markets,” Frank says, “to do what they do best.”

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