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VIRTUALISATION Pay for e-News? Not likely sir!
VIRTUALISATION Pay for e-News? Not likely sir! | Pay for e-News? Not likely sir! |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Monday, 02 March 2009 | |
  
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In addition, Hearst has reportedly signaled its desire to lock up at least some of the content and make customers pay for it. When I hear stories like this I can't help but shake my head and wonder what planet the print news generation of publishers think they're living on. Perhaps they have forgotten that the 20th Century finished a decade ago. First let's dispense with the paid content idea. Even print news stalwarts have known for many years that consumers will not pay publishers for news content - not when they can get advertising supported news for free. The question then is whether consumers will be prepared to pay for an e-news reader? In an era when everybody already have mobile phones, probably not. One could imagine that an A4 sized flexible plastic e-news reader could eventually be a viable device for the home, office lobby coffee table or as a service for patrons of coffee shops. However, such an e-news reader would have to be just be another Internet news delivery device. The idea that consumers or coffee shops would be prepared to buy (or subscribe to) a particular e-news reader from a specific publisher like they used to buy their favourite newspaper is a bit of a stretch. In this era of Internet news, consumers are used to switching between different news sites to get different perspectives of the same story. It would be a risky play to lock content on a news website and only make it available on a pay-per-view e-reader. However, for print news publishers these are desperate times and no doubt someone will give it a try. Eventually, all news publishers will come to understand that to stay in business they will have to work on making their content delivery model consistent with today's new media environment. Returning to the "good old days" by attempting to repackage an obsolete news format using new technology and trying to convince people to pay for it is a pipe dream. |
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