The BBC has a great website. It attracts over 35 million visits every year, it has no advertising and yet it’s free, sort of. As they say “through the unique way the BBC is funded” the corporation collect 67p per month from each household as part of the TV licence fee which gives them a total of £199m to spend annually on its online content. It’s a very healthy budget, in this economic environment, and it has led commercial providers to begin charging for their content just to survive. So could the “free” BBC website end up costing us more in the end?
When the Times began charging for its website they lost almost 90% of their online readership*. From a healthy audience of approx 150,000 only 15,000 decided to stay and pay the £2 per week subscription fee. That would only equate to £1.4m a year. Will they make enough money to make the pay-model viable? What we do know is that most advertisers wouldn’t be too impressed with just 15,000 subscribers.
It would be a challenge for the Times to command the same rates as they did when they had 10 times the visitors but what they do have is a loyal following of a certain demographic – a fact that will be even more appealing to more exclusive advertisers. So it could be a winning model…
The ‘paywall experiment’ is on-going and it’s one that everyone should keep a close eye on because. if it is a success. it could mean more providers charging for their content which is a world away from the original principles of the internet – collaborative, co-operative and free.
*Figures from the Guardian 20/7/10
