Ramanisblog

Tag: media.online content

  • New York Times Moves Contents.

    Logo of The New York Times.
    Image via Wikipedia

     

    Make Good Business sense and saves readers time.

    Following is another way of looking at this.

    Ultimately we shall be paying for reading on-line.

    Funnily this move could boost the print media.

    NEW YORK—In an effort to highlight content of interest to the subscribers it values most,The New York Times announced Monday it would move all articles you could not possibly give a shit about unless you make more than $200,000 into one handy section. “From now on, people looking for helpful hints on renovating a $4 million Manhattan townhouse won’t have to waste time sifting through articles on the crisis of public education,” Times executive editor Bill Keller said of the new section, which will be printed in smudge-proof ink so it doesn’t soil the soft, pink hands of its readers. “They can flip straight to TimesElite for the latest on society weddings, Tuscan getaways, and the rising cost of boat winterization.” Keller added that if the experiment proved successful, the Times might create a similar section for moms in Brooklyn.

    http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-york-times-moves-all-content-you-wont-give-a-s,19188/

    Time has decided to dive headfirst into an issue that has bedeviled many a news organization before it: how to cure online readers of their addiction to free content.

    But Time’s approach is more a process of weaning readers than forcing them to quit cold turkey. Starting this week, it replaced most of the content that appeared in its current issue with abridged articles and summaries online. The move is meant to drive readers to newsstands and Time’s iPad applications, where the magazine costs $4.99.

    Richard Stengel, the managing editor, says Time plans to experiment and will continuously adjust what it decides to keep off its Web site.

    “I think we’ll see what works and doesn’t work,” Mr. Stengel said in an interview by phone. “We’ll adapt and change. We’re in the hunt like everyone else to figure this out.”

    By pulling its print content off its Web site, Time is taking a step that other American newsweeklies have so far avoided. Whether the move is enough to push more readers into paying for Time content is unclear.

    The magazine will continue to make its columnists and vast archives available online. And once an issue is two weeks old, its content will be posted on the site and available to the public.

    Time expects its decision to have little effect on its readership online. About 90 percent of the traffic on Time.com involves content that appears only online, the company said.

    Another Time Inc. property, People, has left articles from its magazine off its Web site for some time. People’s online editors often try to entice readers by displaying an image of the magazine cover along with an excerpt from the cover article. A small teaser informs readers that if they want more they should go to the newsstand and buy an issue.

    Time’s online approach was similar, though it included lengthy excerpts from the week’s magazine articles with the disclaimer: “The following is an abridged version of an article that appears in the July 12, 2010, print and iPad editions of Time.” Eventually the magazine plans to offer an online subscription that will provide readers with access to all Time content.

    Edward K. Moran, a media analyst with Deloitte, says Time’s approach is one he expects other media outlets to adopt in the coming months.

    “Quite frankly I’m surprised it’s taken this long,” Mr. Moran said. “Everybody wants to jump in the pool, but no one wants to be the first one.”

    Mr. Stengel said the decision was an effort to draw a brighter line between what the magazine provided free and what it charged consumers to read.

    “We kind of wanted to draw a line in the sand,” he said. “We want to remain a vigorous and important part of the conversation. There are some things that are necessary to be part of that. But we will experiment.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/business/media/08time.html

     

     

  • Mass paywall shift holds peril for newspaper websites-Guardian.

    Paradigm of shift in media online.
    Story:
    Putting up paywalls around online content will not on its own transform the finances of national newspapers, but a mixed strategy of subscriptions and micropayments could prove more successful, according to research published today.

    In a report based on interviews with 2,600 consumers over a week in early November, media consultancy Oliver & Ohlbaum concluded that paying a sum as little as £2 a month to access national newspapers sites was unlikely to prove popular, particularly if every title introduced payment systems at the same time.

    The O&O report concluded that micropayments – charging small sums for individual articles – was likely to prove a more effective way of making money, particularly if they were introduced alongside online subscriptions that allowed users to access most but not all content.

    “Per article charges allow users to remain promiscuous so would be the best way for the sector to pursue payment from most users, who prefer to mix and match news sources,” the report said. “If all newspaper websites charged for access using article charges of 10p, the likely take-up doubles compared to a monthly charge of £2 a month.”

    The report’s authors also argued that restricting access to some online content, but making all of it available to those who subscribe to the newspaper “might help extract more money from the most loyal readers”.

    They pointed out that 13% of regular readers surveyed said they would convert to a print subscription if full online access were “bundled” in for no extra charge.

    O&O also forecast that the advertising downturn across all media, one of the steepest and longest for generations, would improve only moderately next year before starting to lift in 2011. O&O said an “Indian summer” in 2012 and 2013 would be followed by a return to low growth in 2014.

    The report comes amid a debate on web charging in the newspaper industry triggered by the News Corporation chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, who said earlier this year that his portfolio of newspapers had planned to do so in 2010.

    Yesterday Murdoch told US media regulators in Washington that he was confident consumers would pay for online news to get the “information they need to rise in society”. “Our customers are smart enough to know that they can’t get something for nothing,” he added.

    O&O found that 15% to 20% of respondents said they would pay £2 a month for their favourite news website if it was the only one that charged. Though the number who said they would be willing to pay varied significantly between readers of the mass-market press and those who regularly bought “quality” papers.

    More than a quarter – 26% – of those who cited the Guardian website as their favourite source of online news said they would pay £2 a month to access it if it was the only one to charge. The same percentage of Times Online website users said they would be willing to pay.

    Only 15% of those who cited the Sun as their favourite news site said the same for Sun Online, and that fell to 2% when consumers were asked if they would pay £5 a month.

    A similar trend was evident for other newspaper sites, although the fall was less pronounced. A fifth of Independent readers said they would pay £5 a month for independent.co.uk, for example, down from 29% who said they would pay £2 a month.

    Only 15% of those who said the Times or the Guardian were their preferred website said they would pay £5. The Guardian is published by Guardian News & Media, along with MediaGuardian.co.uk. GNM has said it no plans to charge for its online content.

    When asked to imagine a scenario in which all newspapers charged, very few readers said they would pay anything at all. O&O said that was because most people use a variety of websites for online news and were unwilling to pay to use all of them, or to drop most of them and use only their favourite.

    There were some exceptions to this trend, however, most notably among regular users of the Guardian and the Times websites, with 16% of the former and 7% of the latter saying they would still be prepared to pay £2 a month if all UK national newspapers put their online content behind a paywall. A smaller number of Daily Telegraph readers – 5% – would also pay.

    The same proportion of Guardian and Times users said they would pay £2 if TV news websites charged as well as all newspapers. But none of the respondents said they would pay £5 in the same circumstances, apart from those who read Mail Online, where 4% said they would part with this sum every month.

    O&O also predicted that the advertising market would recover in 2011, as the economy improved and UK companies acted quickly to reverse earlier spending cuts, but that long-term structural trends meant that “Indian summer” would be over by the end of 2013.

    Those structural shifts include a growing fragmentation in traditional media markets, including TV, print and radio, as more ways of consuming the same information emerge via new digital outlets.

    A significant fall in revenues from 2007 to 2010 would be reversed from 2010 until 2014, although that recovery would vary in different sectors.

    Network TV will see its Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) fall by 4.3% on average over the earlier period, for example, before it recover from 2010 to 2014, rising by an average of 3.5% each year.

    National newspapers, which will have seen display advertising record a steep drop in 2007-2010 of 9.7%, would rebound more strongly, with 7.4% average CAGR until 2014. Classified advertising revenue would continue to fall after 2010, however.

    “Traditional display advertising revenue across all media will recover from 2010 (although at very different speeds),” the O&O report said. “Traditional classified revenues will continue to fall and will only be partially replaced by new online revenues.”