R2OK!

mark occomore · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 9955 Location: UK

From June The Times & Sunday Times will start charging access to their websites. Users will pay £1 for a day's access and £2 for a week's subscription.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8588432.stm

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I suppose they need to maintain these websites, and it does cost to do this

John W · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 3367 Location: Warwickshire, UK

ColinB · Guest

It's no coincidence that it's one of the Murdoch stable that's proposing this. Murdoch has been itching to do this for ages now in all of his media territories but hasn't had the courage to.

I personally think he's on to a loser with the idea of paid-for web content delivery. The best existing models of this are where a certain amount of content is freely available, but with teasers then pointing to premium content on a subscription basis. Either the New York Times or Wall Street Journal have proposed this too (or have maybe even started).

I can see the reasoning; with such a massive increase in use of smartphones (iPhone, Andriod, Lexus One, etc) and also the increased use of tablets, such as Amazon's Kindle and soon the Apple iPad (which I might be acquiring), it's obvious that such a method points to the way we'll get our "newspaper" content.

I subscribe to lots of RSS newsfeeds and pick them up on my Nokia. Whether I'll pay for it or not remains to be seen, since I don't buy printed newspapers any more.

The nice thing about digital delivery is that it can be wrapped with dynamic media - advertising using Flash and HTML5 among other things - to provide the revenue stream.

Certainly, the niche information market stuff - the very latest stock market news, sport or other "hot news" areas - might be enough for people who want that info before others to stump up a subscription for the privilege, but I can't see how it can work for the general press titles at the moment.

Whichever way one looks at it, content is provided at a cost to the provider, so somebody has to pay.

Clive55 · Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 1336

No chance. I don't think many would pay to read the Times on line. there are loads of free alternatives

ColinB · Guest

The option that an increasing number of online publishers are adopting is to integrate even more imposing forms of advertising. Users are then asked if they want to pay to eliminate them.

Admittedly not a "newspaper" platform as such but instead an online music portal, Spotify is a good example of this.