Time Magazine’s cover story this week, “How to save your newspaper”, refers to current newspapers operating on an outdated business model, and it suggests changing for content in micropayments –an idea that has been floating around for years. Many experts consider that asking people to pay for content on the Web is a ridiculous notion, and all experiments have failed so far.
“It is now possible to contemplate a time when some major cities will no longer have a newspaper and when magazines and network-news operations will employ no more than a handful of reporters”, Time says.
According to a Pew Research Center study, last year more people in the U.S. got their news online for free than paid for it by buying newspapers and magazines.
The solution of relying in advertising, one of the three newspapers revenue source –along with newsstand sales and subscriptions- seems to be not enough.
Time suggests another option: “getting paid by users for the services they provide and the journalism they produce.”
“The key to attracting online revenue is to come up with an iTunes-easy method of micropayment” (…) “Under a micropayment system, a newspaper might decide to charge a nickel for an article or a dime for that day's full edition or $2 for a month's worth of Web access. Some surfers would balk, but I suspect most would merrily click through if it were cheap and easy enough.” (…) “The system could be used for all forms of media: magazines and blogs, games and apps, TV newscasts and amateur videos, porn pictures and policy monographs, the reports of citizen journalists, recipes of great cooks and songs of garage bands.”
YouTube Shares Revenue From Downloaded Videos
YouTube is planning to allow some of its content partners to sell their videos, and charge for those downloads. Revenue is split with YouTube. Those videos are not protected by DRM technology and many have copyright licenses that allow redistribution and mashups.
Content owner set the fees for downloads, which user pay for using Google Checkout, the company’s PayPal competitor.
Google has experimented with video downloads before. Its Google Video service allowed people to buy or rent video. The program was killed for lack of demand.
Outlets testing this service like Ask The Builder, Khan Academy and Household Hacker charge 99 cents for every download.
MLB.com introduces a high-definition MBL.TV player
MLB.com, a company owned by all 30 Major League Baseball pro teams, will introduce this 2009 season a host of ways to get people to pay for their content on the Web.
Last year half a million baseball fans paid $120 to watch live video of pro baseball game. An additional 350,000 paid $15 to listen to radio broadcasts online.
MLB.com is introducing an enhanced MLB.TV video player with high-definition video. A new technology, developed by Swarmcast CDN company, will determine the speed of a fan’s Internet connection and adjust the quality of the video accordingly.
In addition, users will be able to stop and rewind to review stellar plays (pretty much like a TiVo). A feature called audio sync lets fans overlay their favorite radio broadcasters onto the television feed.
A MLB.TV subscription this year will cost $110 for the season, or $80 for a stripped-down version.
iPhone and BlackBerry users will be able to buy the At Bat application, $10, to listen to any game, anywhere they get cellphone coverage.
Online Video Services Boosts Old TV
YouTube (100 million viewers in the U.S.), Hulu.com (with 57 percent increase in viewership in the last six months of 2008) and other online video services are boosting old TV, because “people are showing a clear preference for a fully formed video experience that comes ready to play on a screen, requiring nothing but our passive attention”, notes the New York Times.
