Survey finds Americans aren’t too keen to pay for online news
While Rupert Murdoch is sure the future of online news is to put all content behind subscription walls, he may find not that many Americans are keen on the idea.
A poll was recently conducted by the Boston Consulting Group that found Americans are the least likely to pay for online news out of nine countries surveyed.
According to the report from The New York Times, only 48 percent of the American respondents to the survey said they would be willing to pay a monthly fee to access news via the Web or mobile devices, and on average they would only be willing to pay $3 a month. The number of willing subscribers tied with Great Britain for the lowest number, and the United States took the lead for those willing to pay the least. Even at the high end of the pay scale, that only reached $7 for those in Italy that were willing to pay a monthly subscription fee.
In short, Rupert Murdoch may think going subscription only is the solution, but it doesn’t look like it is going to exactly make him a ton of money.
The unwillingness to pay for content is pretty much for the reason you would suspect: there is just too much free content in the United States. “Consumer willingness and intent to pay is related to the availability of a rich amount of free content,” said John Rose, a senior partner and head of the Boston Consulting Groups’s global media practice. “There is more, better, richer free in the United States than anywhere else.”
The countries that were most willing to pay were those located in Western Europe, which also happens to be dominated by only a handful of news sources. In the United States there is a plethora of news outlets, from large general firms to very directed niche news services. Essentially if you want to find a piece of news, you can find it, and a group of large players banding together, as Mr. Murdoch proposes, won’t be able to lock down the news tightly enough to keep people from finding free alternatives.
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November 16th, 2009
Murdoch has a rude awakening coming when he moves all his content behind pay walls. Traffic WILL plummet. Without traffic, nobody will buy advertising, and he’s not got enough unique content that people can find nowhere else to drive sufficient subscriptions to replace the lost ad revenue.
November 16th, 2009
The title should be changed to
“Americans will not pay for online news”
November 16th, 2009
Neither will Australians when we already have comprehensive free services like the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) website, that is paid for by our taxes.