The real issue (in my experience) is that most publishers do not really understand the economics (in the academic sense of the word) of their own business.
Few of them understand that they are brokers. Of what you might ask? They are brokers of attention, they "buy" people's attention and then sell that attention to advertisers.
The problem facing the industry is that there has been a sea change in the supply and demand. Prior to the Internet, attention was relatively abundant compared to the supply of content (the medium of exchange with which publishers "bought" the user's attention).
Today there is an overabundance of content, which makes the reader's attention the scarce commodity, so the "cost" of capturing that attention has increased dramatically.
Whereas previously attention was so abundant and content so scarce, publishers could actually charge both advertisers and readers, today reader's will only pay for content that will make them money AND is unavailable from any other source.
However the overabundance presents opportunities that traditional publishers are very slow in picking up on. One in particular: the information glut is so serious, that reader's (and other information consumers) need tools to help them self-select the content that they are interested in (out of the sea of content that they are not interested in). News papers have people who are highly trained professionals in that: editorial staff.
Publishers have assets that can be re-purposed to generate revenues, all they have to do is accept the changed economics.
Is it possible that Monster Cable's CEO is a (somewhat) victim of overly aggressive, unscrupulous or incompetent, love-to-bill-ya, lawyers whom he (unfortunately) trusts?
On the post: Online Publications Still Think They Can Get Away With Charging For Access
The real issue
Few of them understand that they are brokers. Of what you might ask? They are brokers of attention, they "buy" people's attention and then sell that attention to advertisers.
The problem facing the industry is that there has been a sea change in the supply and demand. Prior to the Internet, attention was relatively abundant compared to the supply of content (the medium of exchange with which publishers "bought" the user's attention).
Today there is an overabundance of content, which makes the reader's attention the scarce commodity, so the "cost" of capturing that attention has increased dramatically.
Whereas previously attention was so abundant and content so scarce, publishers could actually charge both advertisers and readers, today reader's will only pay for content that will make them money AND is unavailable from any other source.
However the overabundance presents opportunities that traditional publishers are very slow in picking up on. One in particular: the information glut is so serious, that reader's (and other information consumers) need tools to help them self-select the content that they are interested in (out of the sea of content that they are not interested in). News papers have people who are highly trained professionals in that: editorial staff.
Publishers have assets that can be re-purposed to generate revenues, all they have to do is accept the changed economics.
On the post: Monster Cable Caves Again, With Oddly Worded Apology
Bad Advice?
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