Media Vent
By Bob Sacks
About Bob
Bob Sacks (aka BoSacks) is a printing/publishing industry consultant and president of The Precision Media Group (BoSacks.com). He is also the co-founder of the research company Media-Ideas (Media-Ideas.net), and publisher and editor of a daily international e-newsletter, Heard on the Web. Sacks has held posts as director of manufacturing and distribution, senior sales manager (paper), chief of operations, pressman, circulator and almost every other job this industry has to offer.
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Memo to Diller: The Internet Is Not Free
There was an article posted by Jon Fine of Businessweek -- titled "Barry Diller And I Don't Agree About Charging For Online Content" -- that got me all riled up. I am so very sick of this false discussion.
Can we just start at the beginning please?
The Internet is not free. Depending upon your own special addiction, you pay a hefty fee for entrance alone to the World Wide Web. I pay -- between all of my devices -- at least $300.00 each month. My guess is that if I truly added it all up I would be shocked, and that bill would probably be much higher. I choose sanity though, and don't really want to know how much this free information is costing me. I don't want to do the math.
So how, exactly, do you define that as free?
Oh, so you mean that after I pay at the gate for entrance into the park, you want me to buy tickets for each individual ride. Disney operated that way in years past … and they ain't going back.
If we, as publishers, are to make a fair profit online, it will be as a result of some sort of consortium deal just like cable TV. Do we pay micro-payments to watch the shows we watch after paying the cable fee?
Hell no. We pay up front for anything we feel like watching at any given time. That is the simple answer.
So I am asking Jon Fine, who wrote this article, to send this note to Barry Diller and get it done already. The rest of the discussion is just ridiculous. If we don't get it up front, we aren't likely to get it at all.
Sections:
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Christian:
I would bet that you make your decisions and pay up front. That is the cable TV model that I am talking about for publishers.
The basic program, or the silver program or the platinum program where you get everything ever written for $79.00 a month.
BoSacks
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We don't pay per show, Bob, but we do pay extra for specific channels or bundles of channels i.e., HBO and Showtime, or for five extra variations of MTV and VH1, or something whacky and unique like an All Ultimate Fighting Channel--OK, I made that last one up but you get the point.
The point is, you can charge for certain rides once you're in the park, but they sure as hell better be worth it because free (or the illusion of it) makes everything better.