In accordance with a recently available study, we’re not overly impressed with Rupert Murdoch’s plans to charge for usage of his online news sites. Of 2,000 people asked if they would ever buy online news, 9 out of 10 said ‘No!’ ;.Does that imply that Murdoch’s decision to charge users to get into his news sites is foolish?
I wouldn’t buy news, either, unless…
If I were asked ‘would you ever buy online news?’, I may possibly say ‘no’, too. All things considered, in an age when we can usually read about major events on Twitter before some of the news channels report them, why would we ever want buy access for their content?
However, I would, and often do, buy quality and ‘luxury’ news. I would never pay a cent for among the shrinking amount of free newspapers passed out on my solution to work in a morning, but I would buy a Sunday broadsheet with all its extras and trimmings (even although the likelihood of me actually reading greater than a few pages are really small).
I have already been known to sign up to a settled members’ area on the site of a specific football team (which shall remain nameless) to access extra content not on the key website: video interviews and press conferences, highlights of reserve and youth team matches, live radio commentary on match days.
Would I pay to learn The Sun online? No. You can find usually no more than 2 paragraphs in each image-dominated article anyway. It only costs several pennies to buy the genuine article so there wouldn’t be much value in using its site. The Times? Maybe, but as long as other quality news outlets starting charging, otherwise I’d just go for the free one.
Utilizing a Credit Card for a 20p Article?
I’m unsure just how much Mr Murdoch wants to charge his users to learn an article, but I’m guessing there will be some kind of account that newsone needs setting up. I certainly couldn’t be bothered to have my wallet out everytime I wanted to learn something and I will be very hesitant to commit to subscribing.
On another hand, if they’d an identical system to iTunes, whereby you only enter your password to access a settled article and your card is billed accordingly, that might make much more sense. But, if I had to achieve that for each and every major news provider, it’d become very tiresome.
Ultimately, they could be shooting themselves in the foot with a extent. If the site helps it be harder and less convenient for me personally to learn an article, I’ll probably go elsewhere. I would believe that I would always have the ability to read the headlines free of charge on the BBC’s website, which may not be good news for the advertising revenue of the Murdoch online empire.
Copycats
Assuming that I really wanted to learn an article on a settled site so badly that I handed over my charge card details for them, what can stop me ‘reporting’ on which the content said on my freely available blog? I would imagine it will be very difficult for a newspaper group to stop 1000s of bloggers disseminating the information freely for their users who’d gain lots of traffic in the process.
Recipe for Success?
The success or failure of paid news is in the method used to charge and engage with users, let’s assume that the users value the content highly enough to deem it worth paying for. The jury is certainly still from the whole concept and the odds are that numerous will endeavour and fail before a profitable system is developed. Until then, we’ll have to hold back and see.
