Would you pay for access to online news?

Boggo said:

...and forget the rest with their 12 minutes of news including what Paris Hilton is up to this week and 18 minutes of ads and self promo issues.

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This is normal. Usually a "30 minute" show will actually be 21-22 minutes of content, with 8-9 minutes of commercials and promos.

Boggo said:

Is CH9 losing the plot ?, even 60 minutes only went for 45 minutes tonight !

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Same ratio as above, and normal.

Even though I have worked in commercial television for over 10 years now (and 11 years with ABC TV before that), I still watch the ABC News for the reasons cited above. Who cares what Paris Hilton is up to. That aint news.

If you get annoyed with this trash, you should make the effort and complain.
NINE especially are very sensitive to what viewers want at the moment.
Last week in Brisbane, SEVEN averaged 350,000 people per night, whereas NINE got 190,000. Six years ago, this was the other way around.
Subtle differences are being made every week to NINEs 6pm News to try and claw back ratings share. If more people actually complained when the crap RVOs like Delta and Paris, etc, come on, then you would see less of it.
One complaint would be ignored, whereas 100's would be not be.
The squeeky wheel gets the oil.
Sorry off topic.

ROE said:

arf.com is not serious about providing online service, they are there to offset their revenue but not a real serious online model.

they cost $4.50 a day, who the hell pay that sort of money unless
you are a large fund manager.

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Or a serious investor. I cannot live without my daily dose of the Financial Review, which I always had delivered and read at the breakfast table. Now I live in a non-delivery area. Sure it's expensive at $1308 p/a. But there have been occasions when a study of this paper has earned me (or saved me) that much in one transaction.

A case in point is an early warning on Briscon where I was able to bail out early with only a small loss. I posted this message on ASF for those interested long before the Briscon thread opened.

And it's tax deductible.

If I wanted to pay for news, I'd spend the USD$5 a month on a TotalFARK subscription. Probably has more 'real' news on it than any of the Murdoch trash.

On a more serious note, I'd consider paying for 'proper' news. I've been known to buy paper copies of stuff like AFR and The Economist, so the concept of paying for online versions of these isn't too far-fetched.

I would be willing to pay a nominal fee for quality

I see a new niche market available. If news goes to 'pay to read' then a new newservice can be set up called 'newsoftheday.com.auu' and they subscribe to Rupurt Murdoch's papers. Then just hire a few typist to 'rewrite' what they get from there, changing a few words and such so that copywrite can't be argued.

Viola, a new web site for free that lives off internet ads, run by a few people a day with a very large market of readers who don't want to pay, and no journalist fees! Even Rupurt adds to the success and he shuts the door on readers on his web sites.

If they delivered the same content as the print, then yes.

I just don't get it.

Advertising revenues decline because the advertisers see the audience are using other media and need to keep in touch with their market.

Newspaper business feels the pain of lost revenue from this but then decides to risk alienating their audience by charging them access? This is the same audience that attracts the advertisers to pay for ads. Won't a reduced audience reduce the value of the advertisements?

The price of a paper has never covered the cost of production anyway. It's just the vehicle to deliver advertising, classifieds etc and the news was the lure.

Cheers,

Kenny

Boggo said:

I agree with you Julia, add to that SBS World News and forget the rest with their 12 minutes of news including what Paris Hilton is up to this week and 18 minutes of ads and self promo issues.

Is CH9 losing the plot ?, even 60 minutes only went for 45 minutes tonight !

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They dropped the Geelong school kids suicide story at the last minute...

Interesting debate..

I'd have to say an emphatic "no", not with the quality we are receiving.. I would simply switch to ABC news.. The articles are a little brief, but at least you get the information.

If the quality improved, I would maybe consider it.

News Ltd websites are an absolute joke, they'd totally have to go almost the exact opposite to the way they currently go, so I can't see that happening. No celebrity ****, no stupid "odd spot" articles passed off as news. Most of that is there because they know it gets their visitor numbers up and that a stupid headline is an attention grabbing one. These visitor numbers they use to leverage advertisers, however users *paying* for such content is a different story. Most would be happy to read such 'light' news as entertainment almost, but only if it was free.

With our papers being bent over by the realestate industry (the most obvious example), it's ridiculous the clear bias that is exhibited, and they expect us to *pay* to view clearly biased articles? I find that a joke. They've got another thing coming if they think users will be prepared for such bias! If you read the 'reader comments' section on many of these, many of these are attacking the bias shown, so readers aren't as stupid (behind the scenes) as the publications may think when it comes to these things.

Much of it these days seems to be so dumbed down, or afraid to tread on anything other than easy targets, there is hardly anything that is crossing the line into 'journalism' that I would consider paying for. A lot of articles are simply copy/paste from Reuters or AFP, so again, I don't see the justification in paying for content that may appear elsewhere.

I'd also be peeved if you had to pay for such websites AND you received heavy pop-up, pop-up ads, or those annoying ads with the video that blasts you unexpectedly. You'd effectively be paying for advertising.

Newspapers: May charge for online access

I have seen this little cherry pop up a few times over the past couple of weeks. And I see again an article link from this site. If you haven’t seen it, go here:

http://www.thebull.com.au/articles_detail.php?id=5925

I am not necessarily against the idea, the Fin Review has been charging for a long time to read news articles, I don’t pay it, its just not good enough, however people do and have generally accepted it.

However, this is the rub for me:

Mr Hopkins said charging for online content would not be controversial if publishers offered high quality, unique content.

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Who will be the guardians of this “high quality and unique content”? Example: I don’t think there are few who could claim (with a straight face) that the Curious Snail (Courier Mail for those who don’t know) is anything other than poor quality chip paper. So, should I have to pay for this apparent “high quality”? Considering that most papers are owned by the same mob and they circulate the same stories amongst each other then I don’t think there can be much claim to any “unique content”.

Would you pay? Say the Oz starts charging say $10 a month, or $75 for a yr or something like that, would you pay for it?

gfresh said:

Interesting debate..

I'd have to say an emphatic "no", not with the quality we are receiving.. I would simply switch to ABC news.. The articles are a little brief, but at least you get the information.

If the quality improved, I would maybe consider it.


...

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One day we might not have a choice.

disarray said:

the future looks something like this ...

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Very well might. I'm sure many would be willing to pay $5 a month for Google's sites, and that's with free competitors.

in reference to google sites (youtube etc) I don't think we will ever have to pay for them as these sites are simple to mimic and it would take about 60 secs for someone to fill the void for free.

chode84 said:

in reference to google sites (youtube etc) I don't think we will ever have to pay for them as these sites are simple to mimic and it would take about 60 secs for someone to fill the void for free.

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YOutube is not making money for google, with a loss of ~$500m for 2009.

http://www.businessinsider.com/is-youtube-doomed-2009-4

And there are serious questions about how the youtube model will be sustainable without big brother dipping deep consistently

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...s-Hollywood-plan-wont-end-YouTube-losses.html

The playing field is changing. Disturbing article!

Newspaper Chain’s New Business Plan: Copyright Suits

Steve Gibson has a plan to save the media world’s financial crisis ”” and it’s not the iPad.

Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And he says he’s making money.

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Gibson’s vision is to monetize news content on the backend, by scouring the internet for infringing copies of his client’s articles, then suing and relying on the harsh penalties in the Copyright Act ”” up to $150,000 for a single infringement ”” to compel quick settlements. Since Righthaven’s formation in March, the company has filed at least 80 federal lawsuits against website operators and individual bloggers who’ve re-posted articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, his first client.

Now he’s talking expansion. The Review-Journal’s publisher, Stephens Media in Las Vegas, runs over 70 other newspapers in nine states, and Gibson says he already has an agreement to expand his practice to cover those properties. (Stephens Media declined comment, and referred inquiries to Gibson.) Hundreds of lawsuits, he says, are already in the works by year’s end. “We perceive there to be millions, if not billions, of infringements out there,” he says.

More>>>

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The Market Ticker guy has an interesting article on the above linky.

http://market-ticker.org/archives/2521-Assaults-On-Forums-Online.html

Righthaven needs to go read Section 512 of the Copyright Act. It specifically provides a "safe harbor" for forum operators.

While the suits against individual posters (bloggers or forum users) who violate copyrights are on their face defensible, going after forum owners is another matter entirely.

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