Making sense of paywall figures
Fairfax’s AGM statement this week and today’s quarterly release of newspaper criculation numbers include digital data – but without enough detail to give a true picture, argues Merja Myllylahti, in a crossposting from The Conversation
Media companies are failing to deliver transparency about their digital subscriptions, as my recent study about paywalls found.
The research of paywalls in eight countries found paid online content presents roughly 10% of news companies’ total publishing or circulation revenue. This is not enough to make paywalls a viable business model in the short term.
In fact, trying to make sense of how many people are paying for access to online news content is much harder than you might think. Newspaper companies are disclosing very ambiguous figures about their online subscriptions, and are reluctant to reveal how much paywalls ultimately contribute to their bottom line.
Thank goodness! if you can believe this article, the media now along with every other business has to justify it’s rate/price increases by market value and content sold,. If you need it , you will buy it . Media has the benefits readership/ listener ,viewer, audiences. to market , which if the proprietors have their eye on the ball , rather than diversification and expansion. This has to be a good thing!
Not sure this piece helps a lot. Newspaper companies have adopted “paywalls” in about 650 instances, but few are actually making content the actual business the way the WSJ, FT and perhaps NYT have. The big problem is that advertising is getting worse and publishers are still talking about a “recovery” at some point!
Fairfax and News are in denial about the issue. Neither will charge much for the core content value and neither is seeing anything other than further degradation of advertising. In short, they have no plan.
If News and Fairfax had a plan they would be making seriously good multimedia news products that people value. They would also have re-shaped their print products to highlight their strengths.
Both have shipped out most of their better talent and are barely hanging on to what remains.
Amazingly, the managers are still pocketing the salaries that applied in the old days, when money flowed in via the storm drains.
Something has to give here, but sadly it won’t be the people in the comfortable arm chairs.