Confusing pricing from media titans
Jinfo Blog

24th April 2009

By Nancy Davis Kho

Item

Further to my post last week on the launch of Journalism Online (http://digbig.com/4yqhn), there's more news from the Wall Street Journal to support the contention that online content pricing for media is working at cross-purposes, even within one company. As Amy Gahran pointed out in a post on Poynter Online at http://digbig.com/4yqhp, she was paying a $10/month subscription fee to the online WSJ so she could read it on Kindle. Then came the announcement that the WSJ that they would be making content available for free via iPhone. So why would Gahran continue to pay? She cancelled her Kindle subscription and is now reading that content for free on her iPhone (willing to ignore the minor inconvenience of advertising). This pricing inconsistency across platforms isn't helping the media companies. Even if WSJ makes a decision to charge for the iPhone access in the future, they're acclimating users to expect it for free in the meantime. Sounds like the way many content companies viewed the Web in the early '90s - "we'll give this information away for free for awhile as a marketing tool, and then everyone will understand when we start charging for access." Hasn't been the case, has it? Considering the rise in mobile usage fueled by ever more powerful Smartphone technology, the media companies are in danger of cutting off the mobile channel as a revenue source in just the same way.

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