IMHO – £1 a day for online news is madness
The Times and The Sun are going to start charging £1 a day for online content in June. And that’s why I’ll be heading elsewhere to get the World Cup results, see how the new government is getting on and do the crossword.
The Americans – labouring under the misapprehension that The Times is part of the fabric of British life – are shocked. The British – who know that The Sun really is part of the fabric of their society – will read The Mirror instead.
Why? Because paying £1 a day to read either of them online is madness. The paper edition of The Times costs that much, but The Sun is only 20p at the moment. Those are sums that would cover printing, marketing and distribution (in the case of The Sun, not even that).
Online, there is no paper. Distribution is free. And a new marketing model is evolving that is also less costly than traditional advertising. Online publishing isn’t free, but charging readers a premium fee (and asking them to provide their own hardware) is hoisting a middle finger in their direction.
The sane majority of those papers’ readers will flick one right back. Let’s see how long it takes News Corp to back down and drop its prices. My dollar says they’ll be forced to set a fair(er) price within a week of launching the paywall.
You?
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