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Andrew Marr writing on the BBC web site made some very good points concerning “new media” and whilst I would agree that “News Content” should be paid for, the real problem is that the current Media Barons haven’t sorted out the answer to the basic question which is, HOW ?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10745720

To my mind the reason for this is that no one is sufficiently daring enough to really “think outside of the box”. The focus seems not to have switched off from the past business model of a cover price + advertising revenue for the physical delivery of a paper product. The fixation on pay walls for access assumes that all you do is get the customer to switch from paying for a paper copy to paying for computer/mobile access and that is wrong.

Paying For What ?

One of the points that Andrew Marr makes and I agree with him, is that if we are going to pay for web access, we only want to pay for what we want and not for a lot of material that we don’t. I must have given up buying a daily newspaper over 15 years ago although I continued buying the Sunday Times up until 5 years ago. The reason that I stopped buying the Sunday Times I recall quite well, I noticed that over a period of time, I was reading less and less of this multi-part section of a forest and it wasn’t value for money any more so, I ditched it.

Oddly and I have been reading on-line for these past 6 years, I have noticed that the on-line editions of the broadsheets too, are becoming less and less engaging. Whereas I used to read quite a number of articles and editorials in each from the various titles, now days I increasingly just scan them and read little, is it me ? Or are they really just dying in front of us ?

Whether The Guardian is right in saying that The Times has lost 90% of its web traffic, the Murdoch Model of pay wall is obviously wrong and in no small part for the reasons stated above, paying for a lot of guff you are just not interested in. Instead of paying for access to individual titles like the Times, you need an “Access All Areas Pass” in return for your money but the commercial rivalry between the various Media Groups and practical realities make this an impossible solution.

Besides which, apparently The Mail has a very successful ‘free’ web site that gets an awful lot of traffic and therefore, web advertising. Someone commented that is was very heavily “Celebrity Gossip” but frankly, all that demonstrates is that they have been successful in identifying a market. The other feature is that unlike others, they follow a different line to the print version and even have different staff to produce their web version…

Possible Solution Shapes

If I were putting together a possible business model, I would be inclined to copy what Nissan and Toyota did when building new car plants in the UK – build them anywhere you like but, avoid the historical car manufacturing areas – far too many bad habits from the past among the labour force, start afresh and build a new “culture”.

Although he did not like the phrase, the ‘Top Level Aggregators’ by which I assume he means the various media companies that will survive come what may including the BBC, News Corporation and so on…is an idea and assumption that I believe is totally wrong. Indeed, I think the “assumption” that they and particularly the BBC, will ‘prevail come rain or shine’ is part of the problem and an expression of ‘employees’ such as Andrew Marr who don’t want anything to change really but…Tough, it will !

The Music Business

If we look at the “Music Business” historically, it was organisations that paid their “acts” the least they could in return for National and International distribution of their ‘talents’, what mattered most was “The Corporation” and its profits. As I understand it today, in the ‘digital age’, putting your best product ‘out there’ on the web for little financial return or, even free, can lead to highly profitable, “Live Tours/Gigs” where the artist really makes his/her money.

But if we look at this objectively, all that has happened in the past is that raw underfunded talent who through their own efforts have ‘proved/established themselves locally’, are taken up by a ‘Corporation’ for the corporation’s own needs, not theirs. In comparison, today’s Journalists are little different, they are the ‘Hollywood Starlets’, they think, of this Age but in reality, count for little personally in the ‘scheme of things’, they have ‘swapped’ a salary and perks for both their Soul and their personal freedom.

Top Level Aggregators

In this up-coming world, these “Top Level Aggregators” are unlikely to remain as the traditional Fleet Street ‘titles’ or even the BBC, one might well question why they imagine that they would when both commercially and in terms of the Licence Fee, they are ‘under fire’ ?

It is more likely that “Top Level Aggregators” will be businesses which host hundreds and thousands of specialist ‘blogs’ behind appropriate interest “Portals”, the authors of which are remunerated by hits and the popularity of their sites or sections within the whole. Bear in mind these ‘contributors’ may not just be individuals, they could be ‘groups’ as in the Research Department of a University, even the R&D unit of a company, Green Peace or the Salvation Army.

The public will buy an ‘access all areas’ pass for each portal or collection of portals. The income will come from the basic subscription and commercial advertising where advertising is sold on individual specialist/user profile basis because that technology already exists to deliver that. Being able to target people with specific interests be they freshwater fishing, rose growing or punk fashion, will be what advertisers will both expect and part with their money for.

Could major advertisers create their own blogs/programmes under such a system ? Of course they could but, they would have to be very clever at doing so in order to develop a regular audience to justify the costs involved behind such an approach. However and looked at another way, it would be little different from the common practice of advertisers in the USA funding a major drama series on American TV.

Future Developments

In due course, this top level business could expand beyond being a conduit for collecting and distributing money, to providing support services to contributors on legal matters, access to photographic libraries, video, music tracks, research and so forth. In a sense, instead of the newspapers looking to their current ‘business model’ as a design for their future, they should look at the specialist“magazine publishing” business model as it exists today as their most likely future.

The main point being that by being a “brand new business model”, a ‘Master Blog Portal’ frees itself from the constraints of the past, the creative destruction of capitalism at its best which will probably sweep away most of the “big name” media companies of today and even the BBC won’t be immune from these changes as what amounts to a freelance world emerges from the ashes of the past.