Times Online to relaunch with paywall
Posted by Nestor Bailly on December 10, 2009 at 1:16 PM
The Times head honchos realize that they must innovate to create a desirable and competitive product before they can put up paywalls. Times Media's digital development head Hector Arthur and News International's strategy and product development director Dominic Young remained calm and confident of their new paid content strategy at a panel organized by Microsoft's MSN UK HQ.
In terms of the potential problems with advertisers that paywalls present, Arthur said that "It's important we talk with the ad agencies to figure out how things will be in that world ...we need a constructive dialogue."
Although it is possible that certain advertisers would be attracted by the targeted audience that gets behind paywalls, that audience at the same time would not want ads on the sites they pay for.
When confronted with the strong evidence that a large majority would not pay for news online, such as the paidContent:UK poll, Mr. Arthur was not surprised. However, he was sure that there's opportunity to convert in the not-sures" (around 12% of those polled). Young added later: "A small part of the audience is ready to go that way." But is that small part enough to float a news organization?
The Times Online is officially planned to launch as paid-only sometime next spring. A Sunday Times site will be spun off soon after and will be paid-only as well. Specific details have not been released, but it would be safe to assume that the new sites would charge similarly to is competitors and to what it charges now.
Arthur is concentrating on making the daily Times Online work: "For me, it was quite liberating to make the decision, quite early on, which way we were going in the editorial team. We've been focusing on what will that mean for the reader ... and what will that mean for our journalism."
Within that, he's emphasizing presentation: "It's important to innovate around how you deliver." And Young echoed: "What they're buying is the package, the curation, the journalism, the opinion." No word yet on what this will actually be.
In order for any paywall to work, there needs to be something behind it worth paying for; otherwise people will just find free alternatives (and they might do this anyway, especially if they don't care about quality reporting) as many polls suggest.
Arthur concurs and assured: "We want to innovate ... it may be a commercial necessity ... we want to find more compelling ways of getting our journalism across. We're doing so now, in preparation for what's to come. We will differentiate our product."
Let's hope so, for their sake.
Source: paidContent via MediaGuardian
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