[Upd-discuss] Wired on BBC Creative Archive

[Jonathan Peterson]

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 15:26:56 -0400, "David H. Rothman"
<davidrothman@pobox.com> said:

> Meanwhile here's some more info, from ClickZ
> (http://clickz.com/news/article.php/3327031). Online revenue for the NY
> Times company appears to be $13 million for Jan.-Feb. of '04, up 40
> percent from the same months in '03. I suspect that means well over $50M
> a year, allowing for seasonal variations.
> 
> So that $6M from Lexis and others, even if it's just for just the actual
> NYT site, rather than Boston Globe, etc., is not the be-all and end-all.
> What's more, it's going to be less and less important--much less. 

Obviously I'm not an expert on NYT, but I'd have though more than 10% of
your entire revenue was rather significant! I know if my company (a
publisher) lost 10% of its revenue it would be in very deep trouble.

> In fact, the Times over the long run would fare much better with a pure
> advertising model, with the content woven solidly into the fabric of the
> Net and blog links *encouraged*. - David

Do you have figures for this? I'm not trying to poke holes, I'm
genuinely interested if there's evidence that ad revenue can improve on
revenue from syndication and subscription for major publications.

My company has long provided one of their key publications on the web
for free, and is considering charging for it. They are looking at the
NYT model with a difference - articles less than a week old are free,
articles more than x years old are free, anything else is subscription
only. This provides two important areas of free access - breaking news,
and historical references. Obviously, we feel that add revenue alone is
insufficient.

I should also point out that publishers who rely heavily on advertiser
revenue are in serious danger of losing editorial control. I think we
have had advertisers pull their accounts because we've been critical of
their products. We can afford to do this, but if we really relied wholly
on advertiser revenue, we could not.

Jon
-- 
  Jonathan Peterson
  jon@snowdrift.org