New Media

The Financial Times of London has a fascinating article on attempts to monetise digital content.

For well over a decade, the prevailing orthodoxy of the internet has been that information wants to be free. Publishers, broadcasters and games developers alike are beginning to discover, however, that advertising alone is not providing the sustainable digital business model they expected for their expensively produced content...... The biggest uncertainty holding back media owners remains the worry that customers have been schooled not to pay for content online.

....A migration from free to fee has worked before, when cable operators introduced a subscription model to television. But pay-television took off because it offered a dramatic expansion of the content on offer, from Hollywood films to live sports. Consumers are now overwhelmed by choice on multiple media.