Based on a current study, we’re not overly impressed with Rupert Murdoch’s plans to charge for use of his online news sites. Of 2,000 people asked if they’d ever purchase online news, 9 out of 10 said ‘No!’ ;.Does that signify Murdoch’s decision to charge users to gain access to his news sites is foolish?
I wouldn’t purchase news, either, unless…
If I were asked ‘can you ever purchase online news?’, I could possibly say ‘no’, too. In the end, in an age when we can usually learn about major events on Twitter before the news channels report them, why would we ever want purchase access with their content? However, I’d, and often do, purchase quality and ‘luxury’ news. I could not pay a dime for one of the shrinking amount of free newspapers passed out on my method to work in a day, but I’d purchase a Sunday broadsheet with all its extras and trimmings (even although the chances of me actually reading more than a few pages are incredibly small).
I have been proven to sign up to a settled members’ area on the site of a particular football team (which shall remain nameless) to get access to extra content not on the main 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. There are usually no more than 2 paragraphs in each image-dominated article anyway. It only costs a few pennies to get the real thing so there wouldn’t be much value in using its site. The Times? Maybe, but as long as all the quality news outlets starting charging, otherwise I’d just select the free one.
Using a Credit Card for a 20p Article?
I’m uncertain how much Mr Murdoch wants to charge his users to learn articles, but I’m guessing there is going to be some sort of account that really needs setting up. I certainly couldn’t be bothered to have my wallet out every time I needed to learn something and I would be very hesitant to commit to subscribing Bangladesh Newspapers. On one other hand, if they had a similar system to iTunes, whereby you just enter your password to get access to a settled article and your card is billed accordingly, that may make a bit more sense. But, if I had to achieve that for each major news provider, it would become very tiresome.
Ultimately, they are often shooting themselves in the foot for some extent. If your website causes it to be harder and less convenient for me personally to learn articles, I’ll probably go elsewhere. I’d assume that I’d always be able to read the headlines for free on the BBC’s website, which may not be good news for the advertising revenue of the Murdoch online empire.
Copycats
Assuming that I actually wanted to learn articles on a settled site so badly that I handed over my bank card details in their mind, what would stop me ‘reporting’ about what the article said on my freely available blog? I’d imagine it would be quite difficult for a newspaper group to prevent 1000s of bloggers disseminating the information freely with their users who would gain lots of traffic in the process.
Recipe for Success?
The success or failure of paid news is in the strategy used to charge and engage with users, let’s assume that the users value the information highly enough to deem it worth paying for. The jury is unquestionably still out on the entire concept and the chances are that numerous will try and fail before a profitable system is developed. Until then, we’ll have to hold back and see.