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EXCLUSIVE: In my opinion, this is a necessary step if the financially beleaguered trades are going to survive the current economic downturn. Even if advertising does pick up for other media outlets. Because the contraction in the entertainment industry, and the change to a no-frills attitude regarding lavish awards advertising, 
has permanently hurt the trades which in turn have tried to staunch the bleeding by massive layoffs. (On a personal note, no matter how hard I compete with Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, I’d hate to see either trade disappear from the showbiz landscape. Too many people work there, and too many people need the niche content.) That said, I’ve known that Variety spent 6 months intensely studying all its options. Now toppers Neil Stiles and Brian Gott have decided to go to a paid strategy right after the first of the year. 
That means the website will no longer be free. So online and print content will both be subscriber-based. Exactly which combination of content and services will be offered has yet to be determined. But this is being done in recognition of the sad fact that, ever since Variety pulled back that paywall in 2006 (back when all that mattered was traffic numbers at the expense of subscription dollars), the trade has lost a ton of money. Meanwhile, sources tell me that The Hollywood Reporter is about to dump its daily print version. The date considered was October 16th, but now that’s been moved back. So this means THR will pursue a paid web-only strategy for its content. (Though I’ve heard certain special issues will be published from time to time, including awards coverage.) If THR scraps its print edition as planned, then Variety might see its print subscriptions pick up.
has permanently hurt the trades which in turn have tried to staunch the bleeding by massive layoffs. (On a personal note, no matter how hard I compete with Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, I’d hate to see either trade disappear from the showbiz landscape. Too many people work there, and too many people need the niche content.) That said, I’ve known that Variety spent 6 months intensely studying all its options. Now toppers Neil Stiles and Brian Gott have decided to go to a paid strategy right after the first of the year. That means the website will no longer be free. So online and print content will both be subscriber-based. Exactly which combination of content and services will be offered has yet to be determined. But this is being done in recognition of the sad fact that, ever since Variety pulled back that paywall in 2006 (back when all that mattered was traffic numbers at the expense of subscription dollars), the trade has lost a ton of money. Meanwhile, sources tell me that The Hollywood Reporter is about to dump its daily print version. The date considered was October 16th, but now that’s been moved back. So this means THR will pursue a paid web-only strategy for its content. (Though I’ve heard certain special issues will be published from time to time, including awards coverage.) If THR scraps its print edition as planned, then Variety might see its print subscriptions pick up.Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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There’s no way THR would got to an all digital version right as Award Season is starting to ramp up. Come on, think! It might happen one day, but not until this Season finishes. Why print such rumors and act like it’s true.
What are you, a clueless low-level production artist at THR? You have no idea that that the Oscar planning has already started and the word is… BAD! Here’s couple more: SLASHED! CUT-BACK! RECESSION! Get your head out of your ass and look at the sales staff, we’re dying here! Forget all digital, think of THR’s very survival.
THR needs to do this, and keep print versions only for special awards issues to soak up the ad dollars. THR is a great brand internationally and has gained domestically because of the Reuters deal, which they got because Variety biz people were asleep at the wheel.
As for Variety, pay won’t work.
All you have to do, Nikki, is post a round-up of their stories each day in something called “In the Trades Today.” That, along with the pay wall, will erode their readership.
THR’s one leg up has been their international following, thanks – in part – to THR maintaining their overseas audience as Peter Bart laid waste to Variety’s international coverage.
There are ways to find success and brand building with other business models, but there is no vision.
THR would have been wise – and really needed – to do this YEARS ago. And Variety? They had one chance after another, but blew it each time.
Think of where Variety would be today had they employed an editor who cared more about brand-building the franchise than using the franchise to brand-build himself.
I do not want to see either trade fail. The reporters and editors at the trades (with the exception of Variety’s labor reporter) have built a strong rolodex and have established integrity and trust in the town. That is the true asset base … and there are so many ways to capitalize on that goodwill and expert knowledge.
But the trades have dinosaurs driving them into extinction. What a shame.
If Variety goes back behind a pay wall, it better figure out what options it has to prevent free sites from poaching its stories and just rewriting them a few minutes after being published. Otherwise, Variety will be shouldering the costs of news gathering while other outlets reap the benefits. (Surely Variety has some legal rights to its content, not the news itself, but how it was written and the details etc. etc.)
Wow MC71… how’s that work exactly? Do we just all decide that crap writing is suddenly good because it costs actual money from actual pockets?
When the wall goes up, the game becomes faster and new talent blows away the dross.
What to watch out for: people smarter than you.
No one will pay for THR or Variety online, the articles are pure crap. Pay for IMDB PRO and get pilot news and script sales, other then that, Nikki Finke will rule the entertainment news Internet highway. Yeah Nikki.
If Nikki did have pilot updates, orders, and feature script sales, I would never even read the trades period.
I came to see how irrelevant and how “in-the-pocket” of studios Variety was during the WGA strike. I’m just glad there’s one less BS “industry rag” I won’t have to surf to on the Internet. DH has better coverage. See you, Variety…
and what about digital divide that already exists ? werent free online news third world countries citizens’ single option to know what is going on in this earth? those people who can hardly gain a reliable access to the internet currently have this sole chance to involve in this world. and This democratic world, what happened to the public sphere concepts of the and 18th century? paid online news is another greed act by media moguls .. its the next step after media concentration and gradual elimination of variety
I lost a lot of respect for the trades reading their ridiculously slanted coverage during the WGA strike. Before then, I regarded them seriously –almost the “Wall Street Journals” of showbiz. However, they exposed themselves to be nothing but mere PR machines for the studios, with no real journalistic credibility. They’re not worth my time.
They have outlived their usefulness.
I dance on their graves.
This creates a great opportunity for independent newsservices who offer their content for free. Without the billions of corporate overheads the established companies have to carry these services will be able to operate profitably as small advertising supported start ups.
Maybe completely new brands will evolve
Makes sense.
How are they supposed to pay their writers?
I hope it’s a trend that saves journalism.
I hope all the news organizations follow suit. Then, maybe websites like The Huffington Post will not get their info for free. Obviously, online ads do not cover the costs.
Next, Hollywood should clamp down and charge for broadcsts of their shows and films.
Information on blogs isn’t really free — it’s generally stolen from newspapers and magazines who pay journalists to go and find it. Journalists on paid publications do the work and bloggers steal it in the form of “comment”. If magazines an newspapers close down so will blogs — where will they steal their news information from?
The idea of information being free is really a chimera. Somewhere in the information chain, someone has had to shell out money to find that news.
Journalists need to get paid to find news like anyone doing any other job.
I think all unique web content should be paid for. It was a mistake to make it free. The media sector is in meltdown and this move is essential. I saw a blog site claim that journalism was dead and yet it takes all its material from other online sites including the trades and other movie blog sites. Ripping off other people’s content, adding ‘according to…’ credits (if you’re lucky you might even get a weblink) and adding a few lines of bland, glib comment is not journalism at all. Ir’s about time we brought back some standards and professionalism to the media industry. Making it a paid-for service can work – in the music world, iTunes managed to prosper in the wake of an era of illegal filesharing, meaning people will pay for guaranteed quality and professionalism.
All informational sites should go to a pay wall structure. Just like you have to pay to get good television channels, you should have to pay to get good Web sites, too. But it will only work if entire industries move to this model simultaneously.
This run-amuck journalism that has been created by the Web needs to be held in check. I agree, people will pay for trustworthy and professional reporting, whether it be NBC News or the Hollywood trades.
Everyone just needs to give up the ghost and realize that only a tiny minority will ever pay for anything if they can procure it for free. The internet has essentially ruined all industries that be consumed digitally. The only reason DVD sales are still anywhere near decent is merely because the majority of the population doesn’t know how to easily download, burn and play free copies of films on their own TVs. Unfortunately, even older, non-tech savvy people will be able to do all of that within 5 years. The only reason Adobe can profit from high-powered programs like Photoshop is because they know legit companies who need the software wouldn’t dare pirate it. That’s why they price it so astronomically because they know even if they charged $1 for it, every non-legit entity will still pirate it. Only government subsidies and philanthropists can save us from losing serious print or broadcast news outlets. With the diminished financial power and influence of serious, objective media, we’re quickly descending in a dark hole in which there will be almost no watch dogs to keep the corrupt forces of business and government from operating with total impunity.
Eventually paid, qualified content is the way forward.
The sheer amount of information demands trustworthy channels, we need to delegate information accrual, if only from a time management standpoint.