Media
Preview of the Future?
A few weeks ago, we here at Unfit printed our take on the grief cycle as it might be applied to the demise of print journalism.We stand by our work, but we feel as though we should perhaps point out a clarifying development — one that suggests that our friends in the analog mediasphere aren’t the only ones in need of a good cry. In a Thursday blog entry for The Wrap, former NYT Hollywood correspondent Sharon Waxman breathlessly reported that “[t]he word” with regard to wisdom about online journalism is that “quality content matters, and people will pay for it.”
“At the Fortune Brainstorm conference this week,” she writes, “I heard the ‘people-will-pay-for-quality content’ argument from no fewer than three speakers, including Disney’s Bob Iger, NewsCorp’s Jon Miller and AOL’s Tim Armstrong … It seems we are coming around to the understanding that not all content is equal; that people will pay for something they really want.”
She may be right about a coming trend. Indeed, as she suggests in her post, there are plenty of examples of major media corporations embracing the Wall Street Journal pay-for-the-good stuff web model. But presented as it is here, Waxman’s speculation smacks of free-swinging denial.
We’ll go point by point.
“Internet content is undermonetized in general, and charging for content is a trend that’s coming.” Sure. But just because no one’s figured out how to squeeze every last dime out of the Twitter project and you still don’t have to pay for Facebook doesn’t mean that the Times will be able to get away with charging for content.
“You’re seeing the world split into a premium world, and a broader attentionally-monetized world…’” Okay. So we’re not entirely sure about the meaning of the phrase “broader attentionally-monetized,” but we kind of feel like that probably has something to do with stuff you get for free. And, if that’s the case, we’d submit that the market has yet to really determine if this is a real trend — and if it is, whether or not it will be successful.
“People will tolerate ads to get quality content they want to watch for free. (Hulu!) And it’s not killing subscription competitors, says Iger. ‘There was a fear that a cord cutting was going on … because they are getting everything online and didn’t need it anymore.’ They didn’t. Now Disney is considering a Web site that would charge a subscription fee.” Again, we find ourselves confused. We buy the first part but don’t really understand how that proves that TV cord cutting (we’re assuming) isn’t happening everywhere. In fact, the third part of this statement seems to prove just the opposite. Why would Disney (who, we’ll remember, has its very own cable television network) start charging for online content if they weren’t feeling pressure from consumers who were turning away from the tube? And if people are already watching stuff for free on Hulu (though this is currently under corporate review), then why would they pay for similar programming elsewhere?
“With iTunes, consumers pay for music they can get illegally. But they pay to get music of good quality and for a reasonable price.” Where to start. How ’bout: It’s pretty easy to get quality-sounding music for totally fucking free. Why do people continue to pay for downloads? Probably because music ownership is so fetishized that we need some kinda surrogate purchasing arrangement to enjoy the stuff.
“The Wall Street Journal figured out long ago that people will pay for content. So did Bloomberg — smart guy, that Mike.” Yup. Smart guy. He knew his demographic and — like the folks at the Journal – was probably well aware that anyone who wants to read the premium, mostly business-wonk-ready content provided by these sites can afford to do so without too much thought. And though the more broadly interested Times subscribers do certainly come from some sort of means, it’s more likely that they’ll be able to find adequate coverage of their favorite topics online, for free. Brand loyalty goes down the tubes when you can beat the price by 100 percent.
As much as we here at Unfit would love for Waxman’s predictions to be true, we just can’t buy it. They way we see it, this cat is out of the proverbial bag. Let’s just get through the grieving so we can figure out what to do next.
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