On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 2:37 PM, David Lynch <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 18:04, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote: >> I can't imagine the Chat Show will grow its audience by doing this. I >> can imagine the show crashing and burning, as its live audience never >> seems to exceed much more than about 1,000 people. > > I applaud KP's aims, but I think they're going to run into the same > buzzsaw of Economics 101 that has hit most of the news organizations > that have tried to put up paywalls: Why pay for "good" when you can > get "decent" for free? The only two organizations that seem to have > been able to make it work are the Wall Street Journal and Financial > Times, and I assume that in both of those cases it comes down to being > seen as an investment rather than a purchase. Last I heard any > speculation, the estimate based on revenues was that The Times (of > London, owned by News Corp) had less than 100,000 people paying for > web access, plus some number who get the web site for free with their > subscription to the dead-tree version.
These are also newspapers used specifically in the financial services industry and for employees of big companies the company pays for the subscription. For smaller companies the employee has to buy a subscription in order to stay up to date and competitive. There's just no comparison for a general news website. > > I was a regular viewer, if not exactly loyal (I'd skip every third > episode or so because I wasn't interested in the guest), and I'm one > of those people that he's losing. Between the podcasts I subscribe to, > the TV shows I set to record on DVR, and Netflix, I'm just a little > bit beyond the upper limits of how much time and mental bandwidth I > have to take all of this content in, and it's all automagically > delivered by services that don't charge me based on usage, so I don't > consider it worthwhile to expend the money and effort to go to buy > something on a show-by-show basis. I don't blame KP for trying to find a way to make some money for his and his crew's work. And $2 sounds reasonable enough for two hours' entertainment. The problem is that they force the potential viewer to jump through some hoops to download the content. If the decision is to stick with the current model that provides a disincentive to book less well known guests and that turns the KPCS into something more akin to a TV talk show. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
