Moving with The Times
Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at 07:33AM ;)
When I learned this week that TheTimes.co.uk would be charging its customers to view their website, I was immediately convinced it was a bad idea. Now having thought about it further, I thought a blog post was in order so here goes.
From the end of the month, TheTimes.co.uk will charge users £1 a day or £2 a week to browse their content. In my opinion, this will shut off a large section of it's users who are of the opinion that the Internet should be free. All of the other major newspaper websites (The Times' competitors) still have free content and I think it may be a mistake to make the entire website subscriber content. The majority of people will resort to The Guardian or The Independent instead. Why pay for something that you can get for free somewhere else? The answer to this is quality.http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/obviously believe they are offering something nohttp://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/newspaper is and are therefore able to charge for it. Only time will tell if they have the necessary quality to hold on to their users.
If the venture is successful, it might herald the introduction of other papers who will charge for their content. The potential for thesun.co.uk to make money would be vast if all 21 million of its users decided to pay for the content. With the newspaper industry steadily declining and the wide choice of internet news content, this may be a way to keep the classic newspaper brands alive.
So what implications will there be for PR? If newspapers all eventually turn to purely online content, the value of having an article in the online version of The Sun will be the same as if it were in print. As for now when there is a clear difference between The Times in print and The Times online, the opinion of the majority seems to be that print is best. Whether this is right or wrong, it always seems to be a bigger achievement to have something printed than for it to be published online. I believe this will gradually change. The vast audience online will always beat the number of people who buy the physical newspaper.
The big question is: Will The Times become less of a target for PRs because less people can read it? I think the answer in the beginning will be yes. Depending on the success of the venture and whether any other national newspapers follow suit, it may well become the new norm to pay for our online newspaper content. Whichever way you look at it, if seems the death of the printed newspaper is almost upon us.
