Quote:
Originally Posted by mynameisjim
That's what I was saying above. I have a strong feeling the other news outlets will quickly fall in line. The reason: the added viewership they might gain by staying free won't matter since on-line ad revenue isn't enough to keep them afloat, even if they doubled it in most cases.
On-line ad revenue only works when your product is free to produce or virtually free. It will never command the type of money that TV/radio/newspaper advertising does regardless of traffic. This is a proven fact now so on-line newspaper sites don't really care about free traffic anymore since it's been proven unable to support their costs.
There are no options left. This may not work, but it's all they can do. On-line ad revenue simply won't cover the costs of actual journalism.
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Sorry it won't work...as I said it is a basic game theory problem. The newspapers who stay open to the general public stand to directly benefit from the increase in traffic due to the pay-wall.
Further consider that subscription revenues go AGAINST the offline newspaper model -- which is subscription subsidizes the paper/magazine, but ads pay the bills.
A pay-wall is a NEW model where significant revenue to generate profits would come from subscriptions.
What needs to happen is that papers get smaller and ditch the printed models except for high-end magazines that are actually worth it Economist, New Yorker etc.
As ad dollars finally shift online (due to dying publications) the online model for premium content will improve.