80% of Consumers Say They Would Not PAY for Online Content

In a blow to ongoing plans by Murdoch (and others) to capitalize on premium content, a new study from Forrester shows that 80% of consumers would not be willing to pay for online news content. As readers are able to move from one content aggregator to another with greater facility than the Fed prints another billion dollars, Rupert's approach will likely entail a massive "game theoretical" strategy whereby either all move to a premium model or none do: if even one "defector" remains, it will render the "premium-paid" plan DOA.

Forrester submits:

In the past year, we've seen a palpable shift from newspaper and magazine publishers with regard to paid content--they still don't know how to make paid content work, but they know they want to try. A recent report from the American Press Institute underscores this trend: The API reports that 60% of newspaper executives say they're considering paid content options, even though currently 90% don't charge for any content online.

Consumers, though, have different ideas. In a new Forrester report, we find that most consumers (80%) say they wouldn't bother to access newspaper and magazine content online if it were no longer free (no surprise), and the rest are split about how they'd like to pay for content:

READ MORE http://www.zerohedge.com/article/80-consumers-say-they-would-not-pa...

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Comment by Marklar on November 17, 2009 at 4:01pm: I'd be perfectly happy to pay for content. Too bad they don't have any.

Comment by Morpheus on November 17, 2009 at 12:17pm: Exactly KLC...people are tired of the Propaganda. Advertisers shy away as well as readers. Kind of like "voting" with our wallets and poor Rupert wants to change the game instead of listening to the "voters"...

Comment by Morpheus on November 17, 2009 at 11:54am: Rupert is an idiot. There are plenty of ways to be profitable without going to through the subscription route. Doesn't really matter as far as I'm concerned, I don't use "any" subscription outlet because the news and information can be found for free in too many places poor Rupert doesn't own...

Comment by Steve Lee on November 17, 2009 at 10:27am: Actually, the targets for payments are the "content aggregators" like Google and Yahoo News sites which are more likely to pay a share of the advertising revenue that they profit from while linking their pages to the sites that News Corp owns, like the The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal (which already is running as a accessable site to the print subscribers; but, most of these are paid-for by business executives subscribers.)

MySpace, which News Corp also owns has over a hundred million members, that could rake-in a lot of profits if it went to subscriptions, Click Underlined Link:

As Fox News Seeks To End The Free Internet