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I told you months ago this was coming, and it’s even earlier than expected. Variety has announced that, starting tomorrow, Variety will begin its rollout of the website’s paywall as part of an overall revamp of the publication’s subscription structure. 
But the trade issued this warning: “After clicking on two pages of content at Variety.com, one in 10 randomly selected visitors will be prompted to register for further access. Print and digital subscribers who have logged in with a user name and password have full access to Variety.com. Nonsubscribers may access only five pages of content in any given month.
So start forking over that introductory subscription rate of $248 to gain access to all Variety products, including the print editions of Daily Variety and weekly Variety, as well as Variety.com and Digital Variety. “This initial phase allows us to gather more information about our paying customers worldwide and hone the user experience so we can continue to provide the best subscriber experience for all paying customers,” said Variety president Neil Stiles. “The number of unique visitors to Variety will decline, but the people who remain on the site are our core audience. These are ultimately the people we want to reach.” Here’s only what left for free: the home page, headlines, brief article summaries and search results. As I’ve said before, Variety had no choice but to go to this model to pay for its newsgathering operation that generates proprietary content. As for Deadline Hollywood, while we’re making plans to offer a small premium content section filled with for-pay extras we hope you can’t live without, all the daily news and analysis and opinion will always be free because of our advertiser-supported model. How? Because we operate lean and mean!
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Does this mean those horrid, full-page pop up ads will disappear?
Lets hope… one actually made me jump out of my seat the other day.
Variety would have to pay me to get on their website everyday.
I’ll save you the money, here’s all you need to know about Hollywood: box office big, unemployment high; WGA sucks. Strike ruined everything. Verrone out, new guys seem to suck slightly less. Everything moving to Vancouver. CBS rules, NBC sucks, Leno ruined everything and will soon be canceled. Oprah leaving, Reality fading, sit coms back, werewolves hot.
Now take that 240 bucks you were gonna spend on a subscription and do something constructive.
My online Wall Street Journal subscription costs $103 per year, and they want $248? Perhaps I’d pay $100 or so for the Variety site, which heretofore has been a daily read for me, but not $248.
Murdoch, and a few others are touting the pay wall for the WSJ, and other newspapers and Magazines (Bloomberg with Business Week IIRC).
Its destined to flop because there is so little content worth paying for. Its not JUST consumer learned behavior (i.e. content is supposed to be “free” advertiser supported) but that there is nothing worth paying for on most sites, being dead dull SWPL conventional wisdom.
I think Variety will flop, like the NYT abortive pay-wall experience.
Some magazines and newspapers are betting the farm (according to the FT) on tablet like devices in color (the Kindle and Sony E-reader are B/W) for e-versions of print magazines and newspapers, updated with video and far more photos that could fit in a magazine/newspaper. Pricing around $2.50 or so.
Ha! Apple bought Lala.com so they could integrate streaming at $0.10-$0.05 a song (or “free” with ads”) because that is where consumers are going. Paywalls and pay-for-content works for Bloomberg terminals ($1,500 a month) because the users are millionaire traders. That’s it — all the wealth drained out of US and international consumers means news/entertainment has to be cheaper –”free” ala this site (ad-supported) and therefore mass-audience, or very low priced.
Variety is about 10th in sites I visit every day. So no thanks.
Nicki,
why do I need to subscribe to Variety when I get all the news from the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and YOU! Anyway….you’re more reliable and have no hidden agendas unlike Variety.
If Variety has any sense left, it will start a tracking operation that monitors its free competitors (I’m not talking about you, Nikki, you’re an original) with the aim of establishing which ones are mooching Variety content on a daily basis, then legally challenge those who are guilty of this. I’m no lawyer, but it seems to me that there is no way fair use applies to regular parasitical taking of stories, day in, day out.
If I’m right, then Variety can go after those “competitors” and ensure that they don’t benefit from Variety’s reporting and staff without having to pay the same costs. Good ole Rupert Murdoch is getting ready to do the same thing.
Otherwise, Variety will return to its pay wall of old, and other sites will just cherry-pick whatever they like, and post it for their own readers.
I’m no fan of Variety, but you have to take a stand somewhere.
Bastards.
I have spent seven years working my guts out on a project that is just about to be announced in Variety so all my relatives – you know, the ones who told me I have wasted my life (and the only people still impressed by Variety) – could see this mentioned in Variety and realize I’m not the family loser after all. And right now, Variety does this????
Arrogant bastards.
I will NEVER pay for the site (and most days nowadays, the fabric of my shorts is thicker than the thickness of the eight-page Variety print edition.) I might, MIGHT have considered 49.95 per year but FIVE TIMES that much? What are they nowadays other than an announcement rag? Nikki Finke, working mainly alone, hermit-like in her vast mansion in Bel Air often has better coverage than Variety with a full staff.
Short-sighted bastards.
Variety is failing because they have not learned how to harness the power of the internet, not because of the internet. Well screw them. Someone with a subscription will paraphrase all the news for me quite nicely. On the web. For free.
Oh and I’ll bet this pisses off every major studio as well. Any news is good news. They’ll just break all major stories to press that gets to the common man, not those rich enough to pay 248 bucks in this economy.
Stupid bastards.
This is good for the content business. Giving away free content to get a competitive edge is what is killing the content industry as a whole. Where there is quality and value, consumers will pay. They just will no longer pay outrageous amounts, and expect the businesses to run sensible operations. As Nikki said, lean and mean.
Content businesses are paying the price of aggressive expansion during the dotcom years, just like the film industry is paying now for the bloat they acquired during the good times of easy money from hedge funds.
The business model of the content business has not changed. If it’s good, they will pay.
I’ve got a great idea to raise money for your site Nikki! Every 20th person who clicks on every third link should randomly be selected to register for free, except on Thursdays when they must pay, otherwise they’ll be limited to view news stories but not post comments except on odd-numbered months that don’t occur during leap years.
Seriously, could this convoluted scheme be any more (unnecessarily) complicated? The reason they’re doing it, of course, is because no one would come if it was a pay only site because there are 20 others sites doing the same thing — most of them better — for free.
Wow, thank God! I love paying for lies, hype and bullshit!
Am I the only I who read the last part of this post?
“As for Deadline Hollywood, while we’re making plans to offer a small premium content section filled with for-pay extras we hope you can’t live without”
It would mean a whole lot if variety was relevant.
It’s genuinely a worthless rag in paper, less in cyberspace.
whatever, this will probably only help me cut down on the bullshit i feel like i need to read…
please let us know the name of the person who signs up to pay for variety online.
This decision tells me that Variety is in trouble. I worked for a magazine initialed B.O. for some years as their west coast account manager and then they were bought outright by a Hollywood wannabe and he just KNEW everyone would pay top dollar for the website. Last I checked and it was a long, long, LONG time ago – they were in trouble too. They wanted to pay their experienced writers nothing, unload their experienced sales professionals and then charge their readers big bucks for going to the site….and then they thought they could become like Variety….ummmm….yeah…look at Variety now. Look at Boxoffice now–whoops-let the cat outa the bag!
Nikki your content is the best and fun to read too. The others…not so much.
Don’t take me wrong, I want everyone to succeed. It’s just that some are smarter about success than others. How? By knowing the business, working for years at it and making a name for herself….who could that be?
Thanks Nikki.
Well, work will cover it, but it’s a piss-off none the less. Personally, once the Apple tablet comes out, I can see myself paying for a digital edition of Variety, but it just feels cheap for them to take what was previously free content and decide now it’s somehow “premium”.
I don’t buy for a second that they’ll be adding any content for subscribers above basic access to articles.
Agree w/ John East Coast, I’d pay $10 a month, like I used to for Variety online. But not more.
>>>Nonsubscribers may access only five pages of content in any given month.
Whatever scheme they devise to enforce that will be countered. Or I should say *can* be countered — because I doubt anyone gives a shit enough to *want* to counter it.
well, this will be good news for the new THR publishers. the timing of the sale couldn’t have been better. readers who’ve gotten used to free content will just go over there until thr starts begging for the buck witha paywall.
mean is right!
Variety.com will be as popular as BuggyWhipMonthly.com
Okay, I’ve calmed down. I won’t call them bastards anymore.
As a teen, I used to buy Weekly Variety (remember that? Printed on newsprint, saddle-stitched, crammed with the facts and business of Hollywood and New York and always featuring an ad on page three for Zack Norman, available for all roles?) There was a fully wkks worth of reading in that magazine. The Top Thirty TV Shows alone was worth a sack of diamonds and nobody does it as well today.
Back then, Variety meant something. It was the New York Times of the entertainment world, the paper of note. It may have been dry and filled with quips that required an insider’s translation, but it was a valuable member of the industry and an indispensable tool.
When I moved to Hollywood, it was still thick and juicy, filled with columns and breaking news and relevance. And ads for life in Hollywood. Hell, I rented my first and second apartments from ads in Variety.
Then the internet came along and like a tired old man, they lost their grip and lost their meaning and now, with this, they’ll lose their audience.
Sad, stupid, pathetic, desperate……..
Bastards.
Putting up a wall, any wall, means keeping people OUT. Only those without the willingness or ability to actually get advertisers turn to this method. Period.