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News Paywalls Stage A Comeback

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Friday December 7, 2012 @ 1:44pm PSTTags: newspaper paywalls, Newspapers

Seems like everyone is jumping on this bandwagon. The Washington Post “probably” will introduce a paywall in the middle of 2013, the paper reports — after parent company Chairman Donald Graham told an investor conference this week that he’s considering one. E.W. Scripps also told the confab that it will ask readers to pay for digital access in 14 newspaper markets. And now The Daily Beast is “exploring” metered access, it told Bloomberg. These aren’t isolated cases: The number of U.S. newspapers with a paywall “has at least doubled this year,” The Economist reports adding: “More than a quarter of newspapers now have one, and most big groups that do not have plans to charge for digital access.” Papers need to generate cash to make up for the decline in ad sales. The industry generated $23.9B in 2011, the lowest it had been since 1984. In addition, companies including The New York Times and Gannett have reported success with their paywalls. The effort at Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher, will result in the first uptick in six years in circulation revenue it told investors this week.

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FCC Chief Wants To Ease TV Station Cross Ownership With Radio And Newspapers

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Friday November 18, 2011 @ 4:15pm PSTTags: American Cable Association, Broadcast TV, Broadcasting & Cable, Dish Network, FCC, FCC Julius Genachowski, Free Press, Julius Genachowski, National Association of Broadcasters, Newspapers, Radio, Time Warner Cable

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is prepared to junk federal rules that limit companies from owning TV and radio stations in the same market — and go half way in doing the same for TV stations and newspapers. He’s circulating a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would wipe out the TV-newspaper restriction in the 20 largest markets, trade magazine Broadcasting and Cable reports citing “a person familiar with the document.” But it would keep a test that could block a combo in smaller markets if it would result in  less local news, less diversity of voices, or too much concentration of economic power. Genachowski’s proposal sounds a lot like the standard that former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, pushed through in 2008. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned those rules this past July, saying that Martin hadn’t given the public enough time to weigh in on them. Public interest advocates who want to preserve cross-ownership restrictions applauded the court decision. Newspaper and broadcast owners say that mergers are needed to preserve local newsrooms as their companies compete against a massive number of national news competitors on cable TV and the Internet. As part of the rulemaking process, the FCC will ask whether stations skirt the ownership limits Read More »

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Study: Tablet Owners Love Using Them For News, As Long As They Don’t Have To Pay

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Tuesday October 25, 2011 @ 9:50am PDTTags: iPad, Magazines, Newspapers, Pew Research Center, TV News

This is sure to chill all of the newspaper and magazine companies that thought subscribers would return to the fold once the content became available on the sexy mobile devices. The finding comes from the most detailed study yet of the … Read More »

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