If Users Won’t Pay for News, Someone Else Might

An interesting column by Simon Dumenco at AdAge.com called “How the $0 Netbook Might Just Help Save the Media Industry.” The thesis: To make money on low-margin netbooks, computer makers might have to gin up some bundles of add-on content to sell — perhaps including news and media subscriptions. In the process, they’d help jump-start the idea that said content is actually worth paying for.

I’m a little skeptical about the hardware people getting into this successfully, but it’s a reminder that there are plenty of people who might want to build packages of content, either to sell or to use as incentives for their own marketing. There are always combatants desperately trying to gain market share (Comcast vs. FiOS, Verizon vs. Sprint, Lexis vs. Westlaw, Starbucks vs. McDonald’s) — they need some of the proverbial (and elusive) “added value” to get people to switch. Why shouldn’t premium content (music, news, video) be part of the bait? Would you try using Google Chrome, or use a Verizon wireless data plan instead of Sprint’s, if you got access to premium news and music you’d otherwise have to pay for? If the offer were compelling enough, you might.

This isn’t a new idea. Why, back in 1996 when I worked at wsj.com, we got a big check from Microsoft to give Internet Explorer 3 users free access to the otherwise subscription-only Wall Street Journal (they also got some nice things from ESPN and MTV). Back then, Microsoft was trying to grab share from the then-dominant browser, Netscape. They did. This year (when they can force you to download IE8 in a way they couldn’t in 1996) Microsoft is giving the money to charity instead. The newspapers might need it more – too bad so few of them have come up with interesting services worth charging for.