Building a Local Audience
In 1996, Breakfast Serials set out to refresh the reading experience in a new and convenient context. We focused on young people who knew how to read, but chose not to. We soon learned that our serials were capturing and sustaining large adult audiences. We adjusted our product and began to create more inclusive serial works. Out of this, a vast interconnected audience grew.
Audience Reach: 52% of U.S. Counties, and Canada, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Liberia, Uganda, India, Uganda, Mexico, Switzerland, Palestinian Authority, Beijing, China, Bulgaria, South Africa, Russia, Brazil, Romania, Tanzania, Kuwait, Columbia
We learned that readers of Breakfast Serials use our serials in a social context. Whether socializing with friends, connecting with family, or working together with peers and classmates, Breakfast Serials’ installments are shared as the story unfolds.
These social groups return each week for the sake of a good story. Building on the concept developed by America’s Poet Laureate Donald Hall, it has been said:
A good story is like the letter O.
What Breakfast Serials creates is the letter C.
The audience tries to fill in the gap.
But if the space is too big, the audience can't fill it.
If it is too small, there is no reason to.
In the best writing the gap is perfect, so the audience can fill the gap with their personal experiences, thus making Breakfast Serials their own.
Newspaper Credibility
Newspaper readership increases with education and household income. NAA reports that,
- Newspapers are sold to 54 million consumers daily. On average, 2.77 people read each paid copy of a newspaper. With the addition of this “pass along” rate, readership jumps to 129 million or 43.6 % of the total U.S. population.
- The youth market, ages 7 to 17, has a population of 43.5 million—15.5% of the total US population. Their daily print newspaper readership is 19%.
Newspapers themselves continue to endure significant competition, as they have in the past. Information is proliferating in digital form.
