The Rising Tide

When I ask folks if they read The B.O.S.S. Report or Sports Executive Weekly, most say that they get it every week. Those that don’t, fall into one of two camps – one: they are new to the industry and haven’t heard of BOSS & SEW yet, or two:  they say, “I don’t pay for any on-line news.”

Now, I can understand this. After all, we charge a few C-notes to get access to our on-line content. That’s not cheap, but then again the level of coverage we provide for a very niche audience is unparallelled.

At the same time, it’s tough for some folks to see the value of a new story on-line. All of this is about to change.  According to TheDeal.com, Rupert Murdoch said that his company, News Corp. is getting ready to roll out a new on-line content payment program across all of its titles. This means, if you want to read any content from Fox News, The Wall St. Journal, The New York Post, or the myriad of other titles Murdoch owns, you’ll have to pony up with a credit card.

Owners of mainstream newspapers are quickly realizing that on-line advertising will not pay the bills like print advertising did for the last century. The Project  for Excellence in Journalism recently reported that the average on-line display ad nets about 25 cents per 1,000 impressions.

Compare this to print advertising in, for example a large outdoor lifestyle magazine that has a circulation of roughly 600,000. A single page ad costs  around $60K – that brings in about $100 per 1,000 impressions.  Yes, they will probably throw in some on-line advertising for free, but in my opinion, this is just devaluing on-line content even further. Not only do you offer free access to your readers, but you also allow your clients to advertise on-line for free?

Mr. Murdoch’s decision may not be too popular, but he said it best when he told the Financial Times, “If we’re successful, we’ll be followed by all media.”