Aug 10 2009 1:53PM GMT
Posted by: Tom Nolle
online content,
paid content,
Google
News Corp is planning to charge for viewing at least some of its key news sites to access stories, and likely all four major publications including The Financial Times and The Sunday Times. The shift isn’t unique—The Wall Street Journal charges for its online content, and other publications are looking at the concept.
But the growing interest in charging for online viewing, and the fact that this undermines aggregator ability to post news gained from normal newspaper sites, could impact both users and portal players. Also at risk is the notion of the “free everything” on the Internet, a notion that giants like Google depend on.
The problem is that the downturn has made many realize that online revenues are in many cases obtained by leveraging the property of others. Those “others” are now looking to get their share, and that would likely hurt profits of online players if some deal can’t be struck
Jul 24 2009 12:36PM GMT
Posted by: Tom Nolle
online content,
revenue sharing,
regulation,
search engines,
portals
Over a thousand publishers have banded together in an organization aimed at insuring they receive reasonable returns on their publishing investment, particularly from news and editorial content creation. The Fair Syndication Consortium includes giants like The New York Times and The Washington Post, and more than 50% of the top news publishers, according to its spokesperson.
The group will look for places where content is syndicated and “contact” the sites to encourage revenue-sharing, presumably with the goal of then taking legal action if no deal is forthcoming. The formation of a trade group like this is an admission that regulators are unlikely to do anything and that portals and other sites that repurpose content probably won’t do anything voluntarily either.
The question is how effective this can be, given that some content skimming takes place where there are no commercial treaties. It does show that content producers are seeing “aggregators” as being more profit-skimmers than partners, which raises the stakes for online portals and even search engines. Disney is also looking at a pay/subscription plan for online content, so it looks like models beyond ad sponsorship may be finally emerging in video.
