AUDIENCE PERCEPTION OF SUBSCRIPTION AND MEMBERSHIP AS THE KEY PRIORITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY MEDIA INDUSTRY : A CASE STUDY OF SELECTED GROUP OF GOTV USERS IN AGEGE LAGOS STATE NIGERIA

The internet is growing at a phenomenal rate and has started playing a significant
role in the media industries, political, socio-cultural and economics around the
world. New technological development, including television, promise dramatic
changes in areas other than the internet. In view of Severin and Tankard (2001)
the changes taking place in the media environment are numerous and in some
instances, breathtaking. Newspapers have been declining in circulation and
readership for some time. Television is changing from its network status to cable
systems and some magazines are publishing through pages on the World Wide
Web and older approaches to news are being replaced with what is called the
‘New’ news. This is why Wogu, Ezenwaji, Agboti, Ololo and Nwobi (2018)
opined that the integration of ICTs into mass communication has reinvented and
redefined the communication system and the society at large. This paper,
therefore, investigates audience perception of subscription and membership as the
key priority for the 21st century media industry. Corroborating the above, Adelabu and Esiri (2015) submit that the practice of journalism has always been at the cutting edge of technology. Every changes in technology has always impact journalism; from printing press to telephone; from radio technology to television; from satellite technology and now to internet, and this change has always been the lot of journalism, yet, there is no technology that has radically alter the practice of journalism like multimedia technology. Thus, one may submit here that the media is a technology-driven industry; that the developing technology is affecting the way and manner information is designed and communicated to audience; and that at the rate at which technology is developing, the role of the media will have to expand to accommodate the changing technology. Little wonder Briggs and Burke (2003:5) submitted that the media need to be viewed as a system, a system in perpetual change in which different elements play greater or smaller roles.