BBC benefits from Times paywall
Jinfo Blog

8th December 2010

By Penny Crossland

Item

Paidcontent has alerted us (http://digbig.com/5bdbjg) to an interesting presentation by media analysts Oliver & Ohlbaum (http://digbig.com/5bdbjh) on 'Monetising News on the Web', which shows that consumers of online news are a lot less loyal than newspaper readers. In fact, less than 10% of those surveyed who claimed to have a favourite newspaper bothered to visit the paper’s website. The report concluded that if publishers wanted to introduce a payment model to their sites, they would have to ensure a take-up of five to ten percent in order to 'find income which is greater than their current advertising income'. If those are the economics behind a successful paywall, then The Times’ experiment is on track: the Oliver & Ohlbaum report found that of those who read the Times newspaper regularly, 14% have subscribed to the paper’s digital edition in one form or another. Less encouraging are the figures for the occasional Times readers. Of those who visited the site every now and again before the paywall went up, only 0.6% of readers have subscribed. Interestingly, the majority of online readers who no longer visit the Times site have not switched to a rival publisher: most of the 35% of former Times readers who did not subscribe to the site online stated that they now obtain their online news from the BBC. This statistic prompted News International’s Director of Strategy, Dominic Young to wonder (http://digbig.com/5bdbjj) whether the BBC was in danger of stifling competition :'it is important the it isn’t allowed to have a negative effect on emerging models'. Has News International found a new enemy? (see the following Livewire postings on the subject: http://www.vivavip.com/go/e31104,http://www.vivavip.com/go/e29756, http://www.vivavip.com/go/e30240, http://www.vivavip.com/go/e29823 and http://www.vivavip.com/go/e29136 ) Meanwhile, some of France’s long-suffering newspaper publishers, who have had considerably less success with their online strategies than their UK counterparts, have decided to team up with telecom company Orange to jointly monetise their digital platforms. The dailies Les Echos, L’Equipe, Le Figaro. Liberation, Le Parisien and the magazines L’Express, Le Nouvel Observateur and Le Point , part of the economic interest group E-Presse Premium, want to create a cross-platform kiosk (http://digbig.com/5bdbjk), providing online readers with a one-stop shop for general, business and sports news. The business model will allow publishers to set their own subscription prices. Orange’s involvement in the project means that the newspapers’ content will be made available via its news search engine and its erReader store. According to the Orange press release, the service will initially be offered on a pay-as-you-go basis, with purchased items appearing on customers’ Orange telephone bills. ( http://digbig.com/5bdbjm) This is an innovative approach, which will appeal to end users. It’s hard to imagine such collaboration in the UK newspaper publishing world.

« Blog