Burson's CEO Survey-Changes in Information Influence

I find these studies interesting, and always look forward to them (ok, I need a life). At any rate, Burson-Marsteller released its annual CEO survey (press release here). If you have a subscription to PR Week, you can find the cover story and report here. Many interesting findings, but what I look for is influence -- how is the changing information landscape (financial/industry analyst reports, research data, news sources, corp. content, etc.) impacting what influences senior management decision makers.

Burson's research shows the following:
Information influence -- Which of the following information sources has become more influential
over the past three years?

• Word of mouth 60.0%
• Trade media covering my industry 54.0%
• Blogs covering my industry 50.0%
• The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones 43.5%
  CNN 38.0%
• National evening news programs 28.5%
• The New York Times 26.0%
• Forbes 25.5%
• BusinessWeek 24.0%
• National morning news programs 23.5%
• Fortune 22.5%
• Time 16.0%
• Newsweek 14.5%

Base: 200

Some of the data are not surprising -- one would expect word-of-mouth to rank high. However, I have serious doubts that trade media rank second. Am I clueless or is it surprising to anyone else that blogs would rank that high for CEOs? The way I look at it, CEOs of large companies spend a good portion of their time traveling -- not online. Their online connection typically means a Blackberry or similar device. Finally, that Forbes would rank above BusinessWeek and that national morning news would rank ahead of FORTUNE seems also odd. I subscribe to Forbes, BusinessWeek and FORTUNE, and I'll take FORTUNE over the other two any day. Granted, percentage wise, it's virtually a dead heat.

Again, maybe I'm clueless on this one.

The other part of the study I find interesting is "information importance" as it relates to an executive's business. The "influence" shows progression over the past three years. The "importance" shows media with the highest impact right now.

Information Importance -- Which of the following information sources has the most impact on business these days?

• The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones 51.0%
• Word of mouth 42.0%
• Trade media covering my industry 37.5%
• Blogs covering my industry 34.0%
• CNN 31.5%
• National evening news programs 22.5%
• The New York Times 18.5%
• National morning news programs 14.5%
• Forbes 13.0%
• BusinessWeek 10.5%
• Fortune 6.5%
• Time 2.0%
• Newsweek 1.0%

Base: 200

The Journal is no big surprise. But CNN above New York Times? National evening news? National morning news? I struggle to see the CEO of GM or Dow Chemical or Alcoa or IBM watching Matt Lauer or Diane Sawyer. You've got to be kidding me. And no mention of CNBC or Bloomberg TV. And that there is a 6% delta between Forbes (13%) and FORTUNE (6.5%) just baffles me.