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Whilst we all know that newspapers have been struggling for quite a time financially as their old business model of getting an income from sales of actual newspapers plus advertising revenue which combined to give them a profitable existence, has now virtually died. There is the current drive under way by Murdoch’s Newspapers to charge for web access but frankly, it is almost bound to fail.

The argument that there is no earthly reason why newspapers should give their content away for free is fair enough, the labourer is worthy of his or her hire but that said, one cannot help but wonder just why and given the financial resources available to companies like News Corporation, they have not yet evolved a new “business model” and my gut feeling is that they simply have failed to grasp the opportunity and have their feet still firmly planted in the past, could there be a better way ?

Other Approaches

Paying an on-line subscription for something like the Times, Sun or News of the World makes little to no sense because only a highly specialist title like the Financial Times or Economist could command that sort of individual “Title commitment” and likely, would have to offer “relevant specialist material”, unavailable to non subscribers and even so, it would still not be an easy sell.

Sure, I may have missed something but to me, the Murdoch Press are ‘bonkers’ and not looking past the inside of their own eyelids. Because of my background in IT and computers, I still pay an annual subscription to one ‘monthly’ magazine (4 week month it appears to get an ‘extra’ magazine in within each year), and am happy to do so. As a keen amateur photographer, I might well have a subscription to a “photographic magazine” aimed at my target market but and truth to tell, I don’t because I am far too busy actually ‘doing it, taking pictures’ to bother with reading about ‘taking pictures’.

Specialist Interests

An average ‘special interest magazine’ or hobby title costs about, £6 per issue and given that most go for 13 editions per year, this delivers a maximum retail income of £78 per year which, is what the “customer remembers” rather than what the retailer or WH Smith Distribution ‘remembers’ in terms of turnover. All of which gets bypassed if the consumer subscribes direct and save themselves 20-30% off the retail price and it is delivered direct to their door.

For the general media, it must be obvious that an “Access All Areas” internet pass could be sold and work but, the problem would be in how that “Access” income was divided between the various media companies. The ‘Big Name Media’ companies would scrap with each other, the smaller titles would get nowhere a bit like ‘fringe political parties’ wanting TV exposure during a General Election.

In addition, how best to administer such a system ? Likely just as WH Smiths carries out the distribution of newspapers and magazines for newsagents apart from their own retail outlets, the ISPs – Internet Service Providers would seem the obvious people to collect the subscriptions for such a service plus, they could provide the “metrics” on which sites were most popular.

Having Lost Their Way…

The most obvious ‘business model’ would seem to be that which governs commercial TV, paid for by advertising only which puts the emphasis on “content” to draw the audience in and from there, differential charging rates for the most popular content. However, I think the main problem is that newspapers have simply ‘lost their way’ and lacking any idea as to “what they are for…” means that they lack the self confidence to strike out in any particular direction.

Clearly they are not for “news”, TV does that better so “entertainment and celebrity culture” is what most of them do. Even the broadsheets where political insight and analysis to the stories ‘behind the news’ is not very well done. Each has its clutch of staff writers most of whom are pretty dire and boring with few exceptions, all beating the same old drum…

Radical Technologies are Disruptive

There is the apocryphal tale of the CEO of Black & Decker at a company conference after a highly successful trading year, telling his sales force that recent research had shown that people didn’t want drills and drill bits. Apparently, what they wanted was ‘holes’ ! This is a good tale simply because it reminds us that whilst in order to get ‘holes’ today, you need a drill and drill bits, tomorrow whilst the need for ‘holes’ may not change, the technology for producing them could change radically and as an example say a “laser gun” replaced the drill.

My impression is that newspapers are too busy concentrating on the manufacture of “drills” and have lost sight of the ‘holes’ which is what it is about. Their feet are stuck well and truly in the past and this expresses itself as wanting to replicate on the web in every detail, the printed copy business model and not only won’t that work, it doesn’t even start to exploit the potential of the web something radically new is required – “Holes without Drills”.