If you work in the media world, one subject will be exercising board room conversations right now – what price content? Ever the consummate newspaperman, Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation, summed up the newspaper industry’s view in one sentence. “We are in the midst of an epochal debate over the value of content, and it is clear to many newspapers the current model is malfunctioning,” he said. Murdoch then announced plans to start charging for online content from general interest newspapers such as The Times of London. Today the Financial Times devotes a full page to what it describes as a challenge to the foundation on which most content owners’ digital strategies have been built. Rob Grimshaw, managing director of FT.com acknowledges the scale of the challenge facing newspaper publishers in moving to a pay for content model. He said: “A “free evangelist movement [convinced] everybody that the internet was somehow different and any attempt to impose a business model was an imposition on people’s human rights”. In other words, says the FT, changing that perception will mean nothing less than challenging the culture of the internet as we currently understand it. Another insight into content comes from the powerful Hearst publishing group in the US. Hearst Magazines, part of the $4.38 publishing dynasty, believe the future is about “re-purposing content” so that the magazine of the future will comprise these component parts: · Printed magazine · Web · Mobile site · -e-reader · TV programme · Radio show It’s what Cathie Black, President of Hearst Magazines calls the 360 degree brand aimed at reaching the consumer in “multiple touch points”. The current status of content licensing is to be debated at the 1st European Summit on Measurement being organisation by AMEC and the IPR in Berlin in June.
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