Given the disastrous circulation figures in the magazine industry, it’s no wonder the newspaper industry is looking to protect itself. Pay walls might actually be the way to go – just as long as they can get advertisers on board.
The debate about pay walls rages on in the media industry. Rupert Murdoch sure is determined to protect his vast empire, despite that fact his company, New Corp, continues to do well. But if the magazine ABCs are anything to go by, ‘ol Rupert might actually be on to something.
Yesterday’s ABC figures for consumer magazine sales for July to December show serious decline across the industry.
The PPA sold it like this: “In a world of ever more free content on the TV, radio and the internet, the UK public bought well over 1 billion magazines in 2009 and more than 85 per cent of UK adults continue to buy magazines.”
But figures reveal that the sector is continuing into decline consumer magazines falling by 1.3 per cent in the second half of 2009.
Yes we can attribute that to tough trading conditions, but it’s not like the economy is showing any signs of a full recovery anytime soon.
In the past couple of years, as advertisers have fallen away from magazines and favored other avenues such as sponsorship, magazine titles have looked to ramp up their digital activities.
However, magazine websites often only provide the reader with bitesize information and teasers, requiring the reader to then go buy the magazine that has ‘just hit newsstands’.
With the take-up of Kindle’s and the iPhone, consumers no longer need the physical magazine in their hands and are lacking in the time to actually sit and read them cover to cover.
But people do still read online. That we know. So perhaps if magazines offered online subscriptions they would increase their lunch-time reading audiences and advertisers would likely follow.
The advantage of the pay wall, as Murdoch sees it, is that readers can read both the online and printed version for one price. So if you have a subscription to, say the New York Times, and never read it in the printed version, the revenues from the pay model online will still trickle down keeping both versions alive.
It’s the best of both worlds. Or is it? What do you think?
The magazine industry has to do something now if it wants to protect its future. But first and foremost, it has to reassure its advertisers that it at least has a plan.