It was only a matter of time before the new owners of the Wall Street Journal removed the price barrier to key online content. Rupert Murdoch forecast as much months ago. The announcement a couple of days ago is the first step of what many expect to be complete elimination of the subscription model.
It will be interesting to see how the folks at the Australian Financial Review react. Despite their statements prior to Christmas that nothing would change, the Board will tolerate red ink for only so long. The following passage from a report in The Australian yesterday makes a clear case for the free model – it’s about eyeballs.
“At the moment, we sell it to about 1 million people at a theoretical $US50 million ($55.8 million) a year,” Mr Murdoch said.
“But of that $US50 million, it costs probably $US15 million in costs of just getting subscribers and looking after them — so it’s (really) $US35 million. We think when it goes from 1 million subscribers to 20million people watching it around the world, that there will be more than enough advertising to make up the difference.”
I know of newsagents who will feel little connection with the store about the moves at the Wall Street Journal.
Newsagencies have been built around a paid model for accessing news and information, is changing. Free newspapers in capital cities, free daily newspapers home delivered (in many US cities) and free high quality content online all challenge our model. This challenge is an excellent opportunity, it is not something to ignore or fear. I suspect many newsagents are doing both.
I would like to see newsagents engage in robust open debate in 2008 about their future in the face of the changes in how people access and consume news and information. Such debate would guide better business decisions by newsagents and would-be newsagents.