First news websites charge, others retreat
By Alastair Milburn
So, the Times and the Sunday Times are going to charge for access to their websites from June.
Well, as anyone who reads my blogs will know, this is not much of a surprise.
The battle lines are being drawn among the major UK players and it will be interesting to watch how it all unfolds.
Trinity Mirror – owner of the Mirror, Sunday Mirror, People and many regionals including the South Wales Echo and Western Mail here in Wales – responded to the Times announcement by stating that it believes an online service is about adding value for loyal purchasers of their tradition, printed products.
This view is totally misguided, and another reason why Trinity Mirror is failing to plug the hole of their disappearing traditional advertising revenues.
The world is moving on – incredibly quickly. It is a world where significant sums of money are being made from the likes of iphone applications and SMS advertising, for example.
History is littered with companies that backed the wrong ‘horse’ – Betamax was destroyed by VHS, Blu-Ray could be heading the same way against HD…
And Trinity Mirror’s online stance leaves it potentially in the camp that got left behind.
Their strategy is all well and good – but online news needs to be resourced. The news needs to be sourced, it needs to be written or filmed, and it needs to be edited, and placed on the site.
That costs money – even if you just nick the content from your traditional newspapers, someone still needs to edit and publish it online.
The move by Times’ owner News International is certainly a high risk move with so much news content available for free on the internet.
But as The Times editor James Harding himself says, “It’s less of a risk than just throwing away our journalism and giving it away from free.”
And he’s right….with little online revenue coming in in the way of advertising and sponsorship, media companies are haemorrhaging money in paying to maintain their online presence, and it will get worse.
Newspapers are in decline – and again I have debated this issue many times.
Many believe they are in terminal decline – it’s just the time of death which is proving difficult to predict.
And by duplicating the content on their papers on their websites, as virtually all media outlets do now, is simply adding to their demise. Why pay for a newspaper when you can read it for free online?
How will Trinity Mirror fund its sites when there is no alternative revenue to prop them up…and if they finally decide to do a U-turn and charge, how far ahead will the competition be?
The Times offering will be unique and exclusive and therefore a market leader.
And at just £2 a week it’s a far more viable option for the busy person on the move whose days of sitting down and reading a paper are long gone – and many of us can count ourselves in that camp.
Tags: News International, newspaper wesbites, Newspapers, paid-for content, The Sunday Times, The Times, Trinity Mitrror, websites
