I'm a bit promiscuous with my newspaper consumption. I flit between The Times, The Independent and The Guardian and feel no loyalty to any of them. Sometimes I am positively slutty – I'll take one in a café or waiting room then buy another to have my evil way with at home.
Usually they delight and annoy me in equal measure. I buy them based on how interested or annoyed I am by the front page. Is The Indie lecturing me again? Has The Times gone off on some Murdoch inspired rant? Is The Guardian whining?
Sometimes I buy based on the offer; the poster, the teach-yourself book, the give-away DVD. Actually I make my purchase decision on this basis more often than befits the dilettante intellectual that I fancy myself to be.
Yesterday (Friday 17th July 2009) I happened to buy The Guardian – I am not sure if it was the Free Italian Phrasebook or the front page story about the colonel killed in Afghanistan that persuaded me on this occasion. I wondered if The Guardian would question why his life seemed to be worth more than the 183 other British casualties to date in that conflict (they didn't really).
I do also like the Berliner format more than the broadsheet or tabloid format used by the others. It feels so ... European and I feel just that teensy bit cleverer for reading a paper the same shape as 'Le Monde'.
Anyway, I was on holiday on Friday and it was raining so I had time to have a good old read and I was struck very forcibly by two things: how good the Guardian was that day and then how, surely, if they (and the others) could be that good every day, their business models wouldn't be so worryingly under threat from the internet.
The main paper was OK, the front page article on swine flu led with the worst-case-scenario version of the story rather than the most-likely-scenario but that's par for the course – they have papers to sell and we lap that shit up. A story that the swine flu pandemic may be no worse than an average winter for flu related deaths is, of course, unlikely to shift additional papers.
It was the supplements that did it on Friday. G2 majored on a Martin Amis piece on Iran which was quite brilliant. On the way there you couldn't help but dip into the hilarious 'Lost in Showbiz' hatchet job on Trudi Styler and then later worry about the fate of the talented and funny Graham Norton (he surfaced as a guest host on the Jack Docherty Show which I Exec-ed) who is being pilloried for his new show 'Totally Saturday' and who seems to have totally lost his way at the BBC. Then there was a great piece about the retiring head of The Fawcett Society's Katherine Rake ('Feminism's Calm Champion') and the role of feminism in the late 2000's.
In the Film and Music supplement there was quite a good 'Bruno' piece about TV and film pranksters (it was a bit hard on Dom Joly whose Trigger Happy shows (which I Exec-ed) were very new and hip a when they appeared) and good stuff on the new HP movie and more ...
The fact that I can link to perfectly satisfactory versions of those articles here and you can read them for free says a lot about the problems that newspapers are having with the digital age. Newspapers opted to go with 'free' online – hoping that advertisers would pick up the tab.
I have just been back and forth to the Guardian's website a dozen times to write this post and I can't recall seeing a single ad there. The eye has an uncanny ability to filter out the stuff it knows the mind isn't interested in. The recession has just compounded a problem that was lurking in the background – advertisers just aren't (and never were) going to pick up the tab for all the free stuff on the web.
The problem of 'free' on the web is also masking another problem for newspapers. Consciously or subconsciously, we just don't believe them any more because they publish such utter bollocks so much of the time. Now we have the web it is so easy to find the facts behind most stories and the facts are rarely as 'interesting' as the versions that newspapers present. For a purely medical view on the swine flu epidemic for example which is not trying to sell papers, you can always look at the excellent NHS - Behind The Headlines website which debunks many an exaggerated story.
Another big plus for The Guardian is Ben Goldacre's 'Bad Science' column. Not only does it do a great job of exposing lazy and dishonest science and science journalism, it also keeps The Guardian honest. They MUST think, when they are knocking around various idiotic interpretations of dodgy stories, 'Wait a minute – what's Ben going to think about this?'
Friday's Guardian pointed the way towards newspaper salvation for me. For headline breaking news the genie is out of the bottle – we are used to getting that for free and there is no turning back from that one.
But would I pay for an online/offline version of The Guardian if it was consistently as good as last Friday's? You bet I would. It's not a question of whether I'd be willing to pay, its a question of how.
I keep coming back to the money I pay Virgin Media every month to get my media brought to my home by cable. Plus the money I pay for the License fee. I pay a subscription, I don't pay at the point of delivery.
Would I pay more for (or would I drop some services to be able to afford) a subscription to an online version of Friday's Guardian and maybe a compendium supplement mailed to me once a week? You bet I would. If The Guardian can re-discover its former greatness and up its game and if it can figure out a real 'fremium' model on the web it will laugh off the recession and the trouble with 'free'.
These are big 'if's' – but Friday 17th July gave me hope. I need newspapers to get this right. I like being promiscuous and slutty with them. And if they make an effort, I don't mind paying for it.
UPDATE: here's Peter Preston in The Observer wondering how newspapers are going to get readers to pay for their content
Showing posts with label online subscription. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online subscription. Show all posts
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Slingbox Enlightenment
It was when my wife complained of never being able to get onto the computer and also of not being able to watch TV in the kitchen that I realised I had a bullet-proof excuse to buy a new piece of technology.
I was looking into having an aerial installed for the kitchen and getting a small Freeview flat-screen TV and a Netbook for her that I realised that I could do everything with a laptop and a Slingbox.
Amazon’s 1-click ordering makes impulse purchases alarmingly easy. Barely a couple of days seemed to have passed before I was tearing open over sized cardboard boxes, spilling polystyrene packing everywhere and logging into techie forums to try and get my new toys to talk to each other. With only a modicum of swearing, I had a lovely new Samsung NC10 laptop in the kitchen showing a perfectly acceptable simulcast of whatever was coming out of the V+/Virgin Media/Hi-Def/Cable/PVR/iPlayer enabled box that sits next to my TV.
It’s a bit of a head-fuck to be honest. The Slingbox plugs into the V+ cable box (or Sky+ box or just into an aerial) and stuffs the pictures from the cable box through my 13AMP domestic electrical circuit (courtesy of a couple of adapters) into my wireless router and out over the airwaves to any wi-fi-enabled devices that I set up with the Slingbox software.
Gone are the days when Anna (who likes to cook and watch X-Factor at the same time) has to rush from kitchen to lounge to watch some dork massacring a sacred piece of music by the Beatles or Leonard Cohen.
I had a particularly satisfying opportunity to show off my new toy to a mildly impressed audience of students and digital big-wigs during a talk I gave last week in Murcia, Spain as part of Cartoon Digital.
I moan about doing these talks but really I enjoy doing them, despite looking here as though the person who just asked me a question is insane. Preparing a talk like this forces me to think about everything that we are doing at Aardman in the digital world and to present a understandable plan of where I think we are going.
The tricky bit is to share enough with your audience that the talk feels personal and stimulating but without giving away too much tactical detail or privileged insight. A bit like this blog really ... Talking about failures that you have had is always good value – especially if you are a successful company. You rarely learn anything from people who stand up and tell you how brilliant they are.
I talked again about Aardman’s Angry Kid and the huge success we have had with that online and with mobile. I talked about how I believe the business is migrating to downloads-to-own and Video on Demand because the web is essentially a free-for-all in all senses of the words. There is just too much content out there and masses of traffic to it but not enough that advertisers are particularly interested in unless your content speaks to one of their favoured niches, like petrol heads for example.
The failures that I talked about are some of the great little shows that we have made for digital platforms e.g. The Adventures of Jeffrey and Pib and Pog and how they have really struggled to match Angry Kid’s financial success despite their obvious quality.
But my favourite bit of my talk was when I got to show off my Slingbox. I was speculating on how we will consume our media in the future and how content will get paid for in a truly digital world. It’s obvious that advertisers aren’t going to be able to pay for all our content, we are going to have to pay for it ourselves and by paying subscriptions. The license fee is going to stop working soon because a small but significant number of people will stop bothering with TV and just watch everything on the iPlayer or on itv.com or 4OD or Hulu for which they won’t need a license.
In the UK about 13m of us (about 50% of households) pay an average of at least £500 per year to get our broadband, Pay TV and telephones brought into our homes. I am sure we would pay a little bit more if we could get everything that we get through our dishes, broadband connections, phones (mobile and fixed) on every device that we owned. Especially if we didn’t have to pay the license fee.
So, back to the talk; to demonstrate that you can, even now, get something approximating this digital utopia with today’s slightly clunky technology I fired up my Slingbox in the room to the odd gasp of amazement. Luckily the TV was tuned to some innocuous daytime crap and not to anything weird or inappropriate.
After the talk someone asked me if what I had shown them was really ‘real’ or if I had cheated and run something locally off my laptop. I had to reassure them that it really was ‘real’. I felt like the projectionist must have felt when people screamed in the first cinemas when they saw trains coming towards them on the screen.
People are calling the business model of getting whatever you can get on your TV on any of your devices ‘TV Everywhere’. The cable companies are promoting the most heavily as they are the people best placed to deliver it. It’s a long way off being what it should be though. My cornucopia of technology still looks like this:
What I need is one big fat cable coming into my house which delivers my broadband, my TV/VOD etc and my phone calls. This big fat cable should be plugged into ONE BOX which then distributes everything wirelessly to all my other devices. It looks after everything previously looked after by my modems, routers, PVRs, answer phones and cable boxes radio and TV aerials.
Some of the devices my 'one box' distributes stuff to are big and flat and are hung on the wall. Some have a stand and sit on a desk, some have a battery and can be carried in a briefcase, a handbag or in a pocket. They are all computers – entertainment and data processing devices which wirelessly sync up with each other and with content that I subscribe to.
The 'one box' sends phone calls to the mobile devices – I only have one personal phone number and I cradle my phone when I am at home and pocket my phone when I am on the road or in the office.
My music collection, my photos, my DVD collection, all my downloaded or rented video, my free and premium TV Channels, my voicemails, emails, tweets and pokes would all be available on all my devices.
And to make me feel superior and human and to reassure me that we are still smarter than the machines there would be a printer/scanner/copier somewhere in the house that only worked erratically and paper-jammed and needed shouting at with the vilest of language to make it print even the simplest little letter to my solicitor who will never truly be happy unless I have put everything in writing on real, environmentally destructive paper and signed it in blood.
I was looking into having an aerial installed for the kitchen and getting a small Freeview flat-screen TV and a Netbook for her that I realised that I could do everything with a laptop and a Slingbox.
Amazon’s 1-click ordering makes impulse purchases alarmingly easy. Barely a couple of days seemed to have passed before I was tearing open over sized cardboard boxes, spilling polystyrene packing everywhere and logging into techie forums to try and get my new toys to talk to each other. With only a modicum of swearing, I had a lovely new Samsung NC10 laptop in the kitchen showing a perfectly acceptable simulcast of whatever was coming out of the V+/Virgin Media/Hi-Def/Cable/PVR/iPlayer enabled box that sits next to my TV.
It’s a bit of a head-fuck to be honest. The Slingbox plugs into the V+ cable box (or Sky+ box or just into an aerial) and stuffs the pictures from the cable box through my 13AMP domestic electrical circuit (courtesy of a couple of adapters) into my wireless router and out over the airwaves to any wi-fi-enabled devices that I set up with the Slingbox software.
Gone are the days when Anna (who likes to cook and watch X-Factor at the same time) has to rush from kitchen to lounge to watch some dork massacring a sacred piece of music by the Beatles or Leonard Cohen.
I had a particularly satisfying opportunity to show off my new toy to a mildly impressed audience of students and digital big-wigs during a talk I gave last week in Murcia, Spain as part of Cartoon Digital.
I moan about doing these talks but really I enjoy doing them, despite looking here as though the person who just asked me a question is insane. Preparing a talk like this forces me to think about everything that we are doing at Aardman in the digital world and to present a understandable plan of where I think we are going.The tricky bit is to share enough with your audience that the talk feels personal and stimulating but without giving away too much tactical detail or privileged insight. A bit like this blog really ... Talking about failures that you have had is always good value – especially if you are a successful company. You rarely learn anything from people who stand up and tell you how brilliant they are.
I talked again about Aardman’s Angry Kid and the huge success we have had with that online and with mobile. I talked about how I believe the business is migrating to downloads-to-own and Video on Demand because the web is essentially a free-for-all in all senses of the words. There is just too much content out there and masses of traffic to it but not enough that advertisers are particularly interested in unless your content speaks to one of their favoured niches, like petrol heads for example.
The failures that I talked about are some of the great little shows that we have made for digital platforms e.g. The Adventures of Jeffrey and Pib and Pog and how they have really struggled to match Angry Kid’s financial success despite their obvious quality.
But my favourite bit of my talk was when I got to show off my Slingbox. I was speculating on how we will consume our media in the future and how content will get paid for in a truly digital world. It’s obvious that advertisers aren’t going to be able to pay for all our content, we are going to have to pay for it ourselves and by paying subscriptions. The license fee is going to stop working soon because a small but significant number of people will stop bothering with TV and just watch everything on the iPlayer or on itv.com or 4OD or Hulu for which they won’t need a license.
In the UK about 13m of us (about 50% of households) pay an average of at least £500 per year to get our broadband, Pay TV and telephones brought into our homes. I am sure we would pay a little bit more if we could get everything that we get through our dishes, broadband connections, phones (mobile and fixed) on every device that we owned. Especially if we didn’t have to pay the license fee.
So, back to the talk; to demonstrate that you can, even now, get something approximating this digital utopia with today’s slightly clunky technology I fired up my Slingbox in the room to the odd gasp of amazement. Luckily the TV was tuned to some innocuous daytime crap and not to anything weird or inappropriate.
After the talk someone asked me if what I had shown them was really ‘real’ or if I had cheated and run something locally off my laptop. I had to reassure them that it really was ‘real’. I felt like the projectionist must have felt when people screamed in the first cinemas when they saw trains coming towards them on the screen.
People are calling the business model of getting whatever you can get on your TV on any of your devices ‘TV Everywhere’. The cable companies are promoting the most heavily as they are the people best placed to deliver it. It’s a long way off being what it should be though. My cornucopia of technology still looks like this:
What I need is one big fat cable coming into my house which delivers my broadband, my TV/VOD etc and my phone calls. This big fat cable should be plugged into ONE BOX which then distributes everything wirelessly to all my other devices. It looks after everything previously looked after by my modems, routers, PVRs, answer phones and cable boxes radio and TV aerials.
Some of the devices my 'one box' distributes stuff to are big and flat and are hung on the wall. Some have a stand and sit on a desk, some have a battery and can be carried in a briefcase, a handbag or in a pocket. They are all computers – entertainment and data processing devices which wirelessly sync up with each other and with content that I subscribe to.
The 'one box' sends phone calls to the mobile devices – I only have one personal phone number and I cradle my phone when I am at home and pocket my phone when I am on the road or in the office.
My music collection, my photos, my DVD collection, all my downloaded or rented video, my free and premium TV Channels, my voicemails, emails, tweets and pokes would all be available on all my devices.
And to make me feel superior and human and to reassure me that we are still smarter than the machines there would be a printer/scanner/copier somewhere in the house that only worked erratically and paper-jammed and needed shouting at with the vilest of language to make it print even the simplest little letter to my solicitor who will never truly be happy unless I have put everything in writing on real, environmentally destructive paper and signed it in blood.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)