Posted on 03/27/2010 12:22:33 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
Murdoch (and others) are trying to double dip on content - advertising plus subscriptions. The notion that “news” organizations are giving their “content” away for free is utterly ridiculous, they just don’t get all the revenues they used to get from the print, but that model has been dead and buried.
Trying to charge full price for “news” or content that is freely available everywhere else (albeit, possibly, in some other, “non-exclusive” form) is only going to drive majority of users away and will reflect in lower prices for advertising (paid per K/M eyeballs). That’s a death knell for Web-zines.
The WSJ / FT subscription model is not appropriate or viable for non-financial, non-business, general-purpose newspapers; also WSJ / FT have a much wealthier roster of subscribers and need in immediate news access which could cost them or make them multiples of subscription price.
BTW, WSJ site under Murdoch had become very bloated and much less responsive than in the past, and number of subscribers have left it or use it much less for that very reason.
I get my subscription fee back on coupons.
That’s about the only way they can “sell” subscriptions today; but if you think about it, they are actually “selling” you an advertisement form third parties which already have paid them for it...
Not that it’s a concern for most people - they are making a decision based on their own cost-benefit analysis, in this case value and convenience of coupons vs cost of subscription.
True, but not only from advertising: you received a newspaper only upon paying for subscription. Always. Since times immemorial.
"The costs associated with hosting the online content are miniscule compared to the paper version’s printing and delivery costs, and the content has already been paid for — it’s the same content they created for the paper version."
That's the problem: the content is NOT paid for by subscriptions any longer. Murdoch merely seeks to compensate for that drop. The issue is very simple: you read the newspaper, whether on your computer's screen or in print; you therefore pay for the content. Just like a book or anything else.
To whom and for what do you pay to "view the Internet?"
How is that?
“True, but not only from advertising: you received a newspaper only upon paying for subscription. Always. Since times immemorial.”
Wrong. The subscription price roughly covers the cost of the physical printing and delivery of the paper version. Providing the *content* was paid for ONLY by advertising. The online version brings in ADDITIONAL advertising revenue, yet is DOES NOT have anywhere near the printing and delivery costs.
Kellis: "Wrong."
What's wrong? You can name a newspaper (other than the throw-aways "community" publications) that was delivered to you without a prescription? Please do so.
"The subscription price roughly covers the cost of the physical printing and delivery of the paper version."
That WAS true until recently, and only APPROXIMATELY so. There was such approximate correspondence between sources of revenue and costs. You make it sound, however, as if the managers/owners targeted the prices towards such breakdown. That is profoundly false.
"Providing the *content* was paid for ONLY by advertising."
The premise is false, hence the conclusion (whatever it may be) is inconsequential. The whole debacle exists because advertising no longer offsets the costs of gathering content.
Your hectoring lone, by the way, make your departures from facts and logic all the more silly rather than accidental. Perhaps you should refrain from it.
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