Paywalls and public service broadcasters
The move to putting content behind paywalls is gathering force. It struck me that if newspapers etc move in this way the role of sites such as the BBC and here in Ireland RTE will become even more important.
Now don’t get me wrong I have spent most of my career putting professional content behind pay walls of one form or another and have no problem with the concept, subscription models are good profitable and are a powerful form of aggregator for committed communities of interest.
But the cynic in me wonders if all of the attacks on the BBC in the past two years were really cynical attempts to reduce it to an ersatz state when you might then have to revert to an alternative commercial service for news.
I wonder what impact it may have on developments such as the “iplayer”. Perhaps less episodes of eastenders and more news and public service content is in order, but there are some tricky cost issues there to be managed.
The Ebook Hype curve?
A sew BISG Survey Tracks Book Consumers’ Behavior Toward and Preferences for E-Books. The initial (Part one of three) Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading survey also found that the majority of print book buyers rank “affordability” as the #1 reason they would choose to purchase an e-book rather than a print book of the same title. Of less consequence when it came to their purchase decisions was the extent to which an e-book was searchable or environmentally friendly.
Other findings:
Roughly 1/5 of survey respondents said they’ve stopped purchasing print books within the past 12 months in favor of acquiring the e-book editions.
Most survey respondents said they prefer to share e-books across devices. Only 28% said they would “definitely” purchase an e-book with Digital Rights Management (DRM); men were more likely than women to say they would not buy an e-book with DRM.
Survey respondents indicated a clear preference for e-reader devices used as of November 2009, with computers coming in first (47%), followed by the Kindle (32%), and other e-reader devices at roughly 10% apiece.
Although certainly growing, 81% of survey respondents say they currently purchase an e-book only “rarely” or “occasionally.”