It looks like the subscription model for online news could soon be dead in the water. Inside Cable News and Media Bistro's TV Newser are both reporting that CNN.com's Pipeline service will change from a subscription model to an advertising model when CNN.com gets enhanced on July 1st 2007.
I'm hoping that CNN take this idea a bit further and offer CNN, CNN Headline News and CNN International as video streams. They already offer an audio stream of CNN, and whilst this is a return to something that they used to do many years ago, they haven't brought back Headline News and CNN International as audio streams, which they used to offer as well as CNN.
The streams don't have to be mega high quality. An 80-150 kbps stream would be generally viewable and listenable, where as BBC News 24's 34kbps stream is just dire.
But this will be a good start for CNN. Now, perhaps this will show to other news channels around the world that the subscription model for online news just isn't sustainable, as people just won't pay for this online, in just the same way, they wouldn't spend £3/$5 to subscribe to a news channel via their cable or satellite provider. That is why news channels tend to be FTA/FTV or Primary subscription at most, not premium, which is what a £3/$5 subscription is considered to be.
In your second paragraph you said
ReplyDelete"as video streams". I think you meant "as audio streams".
Nope, the conext of the 'as video streams' quote is correct. I have re-read it and what I said was that I wanted CNN, HN and CNNI as Video Streams. I then stated that they had brought back an audio stream of CNN, which was something they used to do years ago, so the context was absolutely correct.
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