Newspapers have never made the bulk of their money from a subscription model. It’s always been an advertising based model, that is why your Sunday paper (the most popular edition) is so big: it’s packed with ads. Why do the executives that run these media companies think that I am willing to pay them for their online content, all of the sudden?
If I do pay, will the ads disappear? Of course not. They can’t afford to do that. The money they’ll recoup by charging for a subscription will never make up for advertising, it will just be a little extra.
I am not sympathetic to the newspaper industry. They could have seen this coming years ago. Wasn’t it obvious that the internet adoption rate wasn’t slowing down?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against paying for great content, but I am against paying for the inefficient infrastructure that exists at most media companies. I am against paying for the advertising account managers and the travel agents. If I am paying for content, I want to pay the content producer – not the provider.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Ben, you’re spot on…couldn’t agree with you more, they should have seen it coming, just like the automative industry and oil, etc, they’re all working on an out of date model…besides the waste of natural resources, electronic content is somewhat “greener”.
Well said, Ben. I’ve never bought a newspaper and never will. One irks me most is that good online content continues down the same path as its printed brethren—chalk full of ads and asking for (more) money.
Take the sleek Times AIR reader. I’d love to use it because it looks great, but a subscription method for a desktop app like that is pretty ridiculous to me. And if I’m not mistaken, this comes after not too long ago they opened up their online content to everyone?
I get more news that’s often written better from bloggers and other sources.