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I've heard this statement before in many different incarnations some with intonations of piracy, some without. However they all fail to see the basis of where t
by _pi 17y ago
I've heard this statement before in many different incarnations some with intonations of piracy, some without. However they all fail to see the basis of where the other party is coming from. They want to be adequately rewarded for you using their content. However adequately differs very much from person to person, you may think that a news story costs a quarter to read, I may think it costs 15 cents, the CEO of AP may think it costs a buck fifty, and the 13 year old down the street thinks AP should pay him to read the news story.
The problem that news companies suffer that makes this a significantly different problem for them rather than a company like the RIAA is that journalists get paid by the company as a primary source of income, journalists have to get sent places which costs the company money, and the company's primary source of revenue is the output of the journalists. For a second lets forget print media ever existed, in the current state of the web where media such as this is demanded by users to be free this is a failing business because of extravagant costs, and almost no profits. Why print media is a failing is because less people buy print and more people read it online.
There are players who beat the market by having a niche audience, low costs, and a high price, ie the Economist. Unlike the NY Times or AP they didn't have to send several photographers and journalists to China several times for pre, during, and post Olympics. While I don't necessarily agree with this business model, an exchange of cash has to exist somewhere, finding where such an exchange is most acceptable is a another story.
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoMarket value comes from scarcity. When you need a million dollar press to print a newspaper, you can charge for it because the capital cost is a big barrier to the entry of competitors. When the cost of printing collapses (to use the expression from Clay Shirky), the barrier to entry disappears, and the value derived from scarcity disappears with it. AP's scheme amounts to a technical and/or legal attempt to reimpose an artificial scarcity so it can once again sell at a premium. Their scheme is doomed.
- _pi 17y agoI disagree, I still believe that the revenue streams are incompatible (due to culture, web users don't want to pay) or insufficient (such as ads) for a news agency to operate. What needs to happen is for someone to suggest a web culture compatible revenue stream that is sufficient to quench the financial need of a news agencies operations. This is lame attempt to do so, i.e. an iTunes for news segments. But at the end of the things the main problem is that users still don't want to pay for these things.
- RyanMcGreal 17y agothe main problem is that users still don't want to pay for these things That's only a problem if your business model depends on users paying for these things - i.e. if your business model depends on scarcity that doesn't exist. If they would only stop being precious for a minute, the newsmedia would recognize that they're already familiar with the idea of making money from sources other than the actual content consumers. After all, it was newspapers that popularized the revenue-from-advertising model in the first place, a model that allowed them to deliver newspapers very cheaply (sometimes freely) to their readers. The smartest thing AP and other newsmedia can do is abandon their micropayment pipe dreams and start getting creative about new ways to leverage their assets for revenue.
- _pi 17y agoThe problem is that they have tried that. It doesn't work because web advertising is significantly cheaper than print advertising is, especially because you cannot guarantee that someone has seen the advert on the web. Which is why they're currently losing money. A full page ad in the NY times on the cover is 75,000$ or 100,000$ depending on the day, one could only dream of making that kind of money on web adverts. http://www.nypost.com/seven/01062009/business/front_page_news_147349.htm http://www.nypost.com/seven/01062009/business/front_page_new...
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoThe trick is to get creative about finding new sources of value in their assets. Maybe the answer isn't merely more advertising, but finding new revenue streams in addition to straight ad sales. Given that people flat-out won't pay for online news. the newsmedia have no other choice.
- _pi 17y agoAt this point you'd have to suggest a solution, because I cannot get what you're hinting at. If you can't my point original point is evident: the news agencies are stuck between a rock and a hard place.