Thursday 7 May 2009

Charging for Websites

The old debate about charging for websites has stated again, with Rupert Murdoch talking about turning his back on the free model, and charging for The Times and Sunday Times content. They just don't get it do they. There isn't a newspaper out there that has a compelling enough product to charge for. The Sunday Times, one of the biggest and best-produced media brands in Britain, doesn't even have its own website. It's true that most newspaper websites don't make money, but that doesn't mean they can start charging. People will just go elsewhere. It looks increasingly as if none of the newspapers will survive the way the web is over-turning the news business.

1 comment:

Jacqueline said...

Hi Matt. What about the new Amazon super-Kindle? It can handle larger pages (magazines + newspapers) and has come along just at the time that newspapers have life-or-death decisions to make.
I'm predicting that newspapers will put real money behind developing something similar, so they can deliver wirelessly and drop the costs of paper, printing and distribution. That's what my crystal ball says.