Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Thanks to the internet, I can get all the news and magazine content I desire for free. I see no need to pay for content that offers no value above what I currently get for free.
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Last I head, BANANA WEEKLY was still subscriber based. Has that changed?
Aaannnnyyywaaayyyy....
Not all magazines need to go free but most will have (and in fact are trying) to find a balance between free, eyeball-attracting content and paid content. Neither can fund a viable operation by itself. What they need is a relatively low subscription for in-depth reports coupled with a free, fast updating website. The Economist does it pretty well but the digital subscription price needs to come down.
In the pre-internet days most magazines really made their money on ads and the subscriptions and newstand sales rarely did more than pay for the print runs and operations. With digital, the print costs go away but the ad revenue is rarely sufficient to pay the staff, much less produce much profit.
NEWSWEEK is likely to find that going digital is still not going to solve all their problems. Even specialty digital-only news sites are having difficulties these days. News Corp is now trying to get rid of IGN:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2012...ogame-website/
Interestingly, IGN would be a good fit over at MSN.