Adding Fees and Fences on Media Sites

[groovedaddy]

Over more than a decade, consumers became accustomed to the sweet, steady flow of free news, pictures, videos and music on the Internet. Paying was for suckers and old fogeys. Content, like wild horses, wanted to be free.

Now, however, there are growing signs that this free ride is drawing to a close.

Newspapers, including this one, are weighing whether to ask online readers to pay for at least some of what they offer, as a handful of papers, like The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, already do. Indeed, in the next several weeks, industry executives and analysts expect some publications to take the plunge.

Rupert Murdoch, beyond charging for access to The Journal, has talked about forming a partnership with a single search engine, which would pay him for the rights to scour the news and entertainment programming produced by his company, the News Corporation, rather than letting all search engines crawl his sites. Also Hulu, which is owned partly by Mr. Murdoch’s company, is considering charging viewers to watch some of the TV shows it now streams free.

Magazine publishers, meanwhile, have banded together to try to create their own version of the iTunes store, aiming for a day when they can sell enhanced versions of what they have been giving away. And more and more media companies are planning to charge for apps on iPhones and other mobile devices, as well as on the Amazon Kindle and other e-readers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/business/media/28paywall.html?th&emc=th

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. They tries that in the past and their sites went dark

I predict a similar fate this time around.

[defendandprotect]

2. We've also seen what pay TV has done to TV . . . even more idiocy than before . . .

[damntexdem]

4. Yeah, but most of us pay for cable, rather than rely on "free" broadcast TV.

Even though we have "hundreds of stations but nothing to watch."

[defendandprotect]

6. Right ... and we used to have Comcast...they make $500 million a year from porn!!!

You couldn't go into the Comcast inbox -- loaded with porn!!

Coincidental?

We never used Comcast inbox -- but if you went back to it, it was frightening!!!

We now have Verison . . . they only helped Bush wiretap, I think!

Agree -- numereous stations -- nothing of value to watch!

[zbdent]

7. Springsteen was way ahead of his time ...

and yet, also underestimating ...

"57 channels and nothing on ..."

[MineralMan]

3. Good luck to them with all that.

It's been tried before, and failed miserably. Information wants to be free. But, you watch, they'll still run ads, even after they charge you. I'll pass.

[Bitwit1234]

5. Hey are any of you gonna pay to read the news the MSM PRINTS.

Didn't think so.