Ertblog

The Times they are a-charging: thoughts on those paywall figures

Above: The future of paid for online news? The Times iPad app

Britain's media industry has been desperate to find out how many people have paid for online access to The Times and Sunday Times since News International installed its paywall in July. Ni finally issued figures this week, declaring that it had sold 105,000 'digital products' since July.

Media commentators have had a field day with the data. The Financial Times reported that experts doubted the figures, claiming they were vague or even an example of 'chicanery'. Robert Andrews at www.paidcontent.co.uk suggests that just 0.25% of Times Online readers have converted to paid subscribers (rather than pay-per-day customers). 

My view? I don't think we can read anything into these figures. We simply don't know enough to decide how well News International is doing. That 105,000 includes people on the introductory £1 for a month offer. It presumably includes people who have cancelled their subscription. Above all, it's just four months since NI launched the first paywall at a major British mainstream, mass market news website. NI will experiment with new offers, new products and new payment methods. It has enormous marketing clout. It will make this work. 

The critics suggest a host of reasons why the NI experiment won't succeed. They argue that NI is bound to fail while rival news sites such as the BBC, the Guardian and Daily Telegraph remain free. They suggest that NI is breaking a fundamental rule of the web: that charging for content is wrong. And they point out that the Times and Sunday Times have cut themselves off from online and social media communities - who's going to tweet links to stories that are locked behind a paywall? Oh, and many see Rupert Murdoch as the devil, and while they may have been happy to accept his content for free, they won't pay for it.

I don't accept the philosophical argument that all online content should be free. Why? If you value something, why wouldn't you want to pay for it? I am happy to pay for the BBC through the licence fee because I value its content and don't want that content to be scarred by advertising. I take the same view of online news. Good journalism costs money. True, I'm very happy if news organisations are happy to give it away for free. But I doubt this is sustainable as print sales fall and a generation grows up with the idea that online is the place to go for news. 

I started this post with a screenshot of the Times iPad edition. This might just show show the way to make paid for content work. (I recognise I was sceptical about this when the iPad was announced in January, but I might be wrong.) I'm not a natural Times reader, but I've thoroughly enjoyed the iPad edition this week after discovering that my online subscription includes the iPad app content. (I was sure it was separate.) The best thing is that I can download the day"s paper and then read it all offline, such as at my parents', or on a flight to San Francisco. The app isn't perfect - navigation is confusing and inconsistent - but overall I love the Times on the iPad. I'd happily pay extra on top of my Guardian print subscription to get an iPad issue. (And for the Media Talk and Tech Weekly podcasts if the Guardian decided to charge for them.) 

For me, that's the secret to paid content success. Experiment to find out what hits the spot for various customer segments. For some regular print readers, it may be adding an iPad edition for an extra £5 a month. For some online customers, it might be occasional print editions for an extra sum. News International seems to think culture is the only way to lure subscribers. I'm not a complete philistine, but it does nothing for me! Content, not culture, is king.

Disclosure: I am head of PR for PayPal UK. PayPal has pioneered payment services for digital goods, including online news. The Financial Times announced on 27 October that it was working with PayPal to further drive online subscription growth. 

Tony Blair: A Journey for the showman prime minister

 Tony Blair was Britain's finest showman prime minister since Macmillan, as I blogged after his last Labour conference speech in 2006. So it was little surprise that today's launch of Blair's autobiography, A Journey, was a theatrical event, dominating news bulletins. 

But Labour's longest serving prime minister's attempt to restore his tarnished reputation seems doomed. Blair now admits he thought Gordon Brown was an impossible, deeply flawed character. Yet he made no attempt to move Brown from the Treasury, and lied to the British people about his chancellor's suitability for office when Brown took over in 2007. 

Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor, today apologised to readers of his blog for not telling the full story about the Blair-Brown feud. Yet we all knew of this poisonous schism - I read The Rivals, James Naughtie's book about the TB-GB storms, in 2003 with a growing sense of anger at this pathetic, juvenile relationship, and despairing of the lost hope of May 1997. 

Yet despite this, and my contempt for the way Blair trashed Britain's reputation by involving us in the invasion of Iraq, I still half admire this extraordinary politician. (In the same way that some still worship Margaret Thatcher.) He won three elections in a row for Labour. He played a huge role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, building on earlier efforts by John Major, Bill Clinton, Bertie Ahern, John Hume and Gerry Adams. He delivered devolution to Wales and Scotland - despite not sharing predecessor John Smith's commitment to home rule. His government saw renewed investment in public services, even though many questioned how effectively the money had been used. Blair himself must wonder how high his reputation would stand if it hadn't been for Iraq, although we'd still be facing a ruinous deficit thanks to Labour's lax regulation of the banks' casino activities. 

Blair claims that Labour could have won a fourth term had it not abandoned new Labour. That strikes me as a crazy claim. Gordon Brown didn't lose in 2010 because he became old Labour. He lost because the British people disliked him, because he and Blair created the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s - and because of their love of spin and sleaze. Ironically, Labour's late move to create a 50% tax rate was popular, belying the idea that old Labour tactics couldn't succeed. (A law to tax 100% of disgraced banker Fred Goodwin's income would have been acclaimed.) 

I'll quote just one passage from Tony Blair's book, as it is sobering:

"On 2 May 1997, I walked into Downing Street as prime minister for the first time. I had never held office, not even as the most junor of junior ministers. it was my first and only job in government."

I've bought my copy of Blair's book from Amazon on the Kindle, to read on my iPad. It's an interesting insight into book publishing in 2010. The full price of A Journey is £25. Waterstone's is selling the hardback for £12.50, as is Amazon. Apple's iBooks store isn't selling it yet, but is likely to offer it for £12.99 if its offer for Peter Mandelson's The Third Man is a guide. Kindle is the best offer: A Journey is just £6.99. I prefer iBooks to the Kindle app on the iPad, but as I recently blogged about iBooks, it will never take off until it offers far more titles at far lower prices. 

Will e-books take off?

The BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones blogged about the Kindle, iPad and e-books again this week. It's prompted me to post my thoughts on the subject. 

I love books. We have a room full of them, and I can't imagine life without the printed page. But when I got my iPad in May, I saw the potential. I read a sample of Peter Mandelson's The Third Man autobiography on a flight to San Francisco last month, and loved the way I could increase font size and backlighting. It was so much more appealing than reading books on my old Compaq iPAQ Pocket PC in 2001. 

I really wanted to splash out on a few e-books for my iPad. I would have bought the full version of Mandelson's book, despite my contempt for the man's politics and love of the rich and famous. But I was unwilling to pay more for the e-book than I would have paid for the hardback. (Interestingly, three weeks later the Apple title is now priced at £12.99 - identical to Amazon's price for the hardback, but still far more expensive than Amazon's £9.99 price for the Kindle e-books version.) And Apple's iBooks store is so empty of compelling titles that I always leave it without buying. 

Apple has to cut book prices to have any hope of doing for publishing what it did for music with iTunes. Music was a far easier conquest: a 99p music track was a compelling product, compared with buying a CD single, ripping it to your PC and sharing it with your iPod. (Let alone spending hours making a compilation tape to use on your car stereo or Walkman.) Amazon gives us a vast range of printed books at low cost, with next day delivery, while eBay offers a similarly amazing service, especially for out of print titles. I can't imagine a mass market developing for e-books while the devices and the titles remain expensive. 

Disclosure: I work for PayPal UK, part of eBay Inc. 

Media that I pay for - print and online

I've neglected this blog for a month or so after a prolific spring. So thanks to Ged Carroll,  Stuart Bruce and Stephen Waddington for prompting my first post this month. 

All three were writing about the media they value enough to pay for. I was intrigued to read their thoughts, as media owners around the world are desperately looking for ways to secure revenue from readers, viewers and listeners, especially online. (The subject came up in a meeting I had with one of the Guardian's top journalists today.)

I was really surprised that not one of the media Ged, Stuart and Stephen cited as worth paying for were online. (Or, more accurately, they all cited print versions of media that offer online content.) Now I recognise that most media owners still offer most if not all their content for free online. But there's still a huge amount of paid for content, including now The Times and Sunday Times, plus the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, which have had used successful paid-for business models for years. 

So here's my contribution to the debate - online and print. 

The Guardian

I've been a Guardian reader since the 1970s. I share most of the paper's values, and like its mix of excellent news coverage, often-provocative op-ed articles and lively features. Although the Guardian's content is free online, I value the print edition enough to pay for it - though I enjoy a big discount through its subscriber scheme. 

The Guardian's website is one of the very best in the industry, and I'd happily pay to access it if it ever went down that route. In the meantime, the Guardian iPhone app is well worth the £2.39 price tag. (And its amazing Eyewitness app is free.) 

The Times

I read The Times from time to time (no pun intended) though I find its tabloid format less attractive than the Guardian's larger Berliner size. I also feel the paper's comment section has got thinner in recent years, especially after it moved the leaders to page 2. 

The huge question, of course, is whether Rupert Murdoch's bold move to charge for online access to The Times and Sunday Times content will pay off. I signed up for the £1 special offer for the first month and wondered whether I'd value the content enough to pay for it, given that I'm not a natural Times reader. 

After a month, I'm rather surprised to find that I may well take the plunge. The reason? The excellent morning business news email, with links to the day's Times business stories - and top stories from the Independent and Daily Telegraph (but curiously not The Guardian). I regularly click on David Wighton's business comment pieces. The Times and its Sunday stablemate think culture is the way to lure people into paying for its online content - it features very heavily in their 'paywall' marketing. It won't get me to sign up - but great content might. 

Zinio

If you've bought an iPad, you may have seen Zinio. It's an application that enables you to buy iPad versions of a stack of magazines, including NME, Men's Health, Cycling Plus, Macworld and PC Advisor. I still like browsing a printed magazine, but when I'm heading for the airport I like the idea of taking an electronic magazine. 

Cycling Plus

I've been buying my favourite cycling mag for almost 15 years. It inspired my Land's End to John O'Groats adventure in 2002 (though it took me six years to act on that inspirational C+ feature). I still get C+ every month, but still mourn the demise of Cycling Today, which I started buying in its earlier guise as new Cyclist after I bought my first proper bike in 1989. 

Talk of Cycling Today prompts me to record my sadness at the loss of a couple of other publications I bought regularly. Bike was a short-lived cycling magazine, which wowed me with great design, photos and inspiring articles. Sadly, I was obviously a lone fan. Similarly, I loved Digital Video Technigues, which I found hugely inspiring when I first got into video editing some six years ago. It decided to focus on articles about high-end video editing programs in 2007 and disappeared soon after. 

Buckinghamshire Advertiser

Stuart Bruce mentioned the Yorkshire Post - God's own county's national newspaper. We don't have such a revered title in Bucks, but we do have (amongst others) the Bucks Advertiser. My wife Karen buys it every week. I read it regularly, but usually with a feeling of dismay at this failure of local journalism, as I blogged in March. Judging from the Advertiser, the village of Chalfont St Peter is a hotbed of anti-social behaviour to rival inner city London or New York. A classic example of crime reporting stifling any other image of a neighbourhood. It could do so much better. Still, Karen's the one who coughs up the 65p cover price...

eBooks

I'd love to report that I'm buying loads of eBooks. The iPad is the perfect platform for them, as the reader can change font size and backlighting, and click on links to find out more about the subject. I enjoyed reading a sample of Peter Mandelson's The Third Man autobiography on the iPad on my flight to San Francisco last week. But I wasn't prepared to pay £15.99 to get the iPad version when I could get the hardback for less through Amazon or Waterstone's. In time, that will surely change as publishers and Apple realise that keener pricing will prompt far greater sales.  

BBC: time to repeat Fair Game!

Back in 1994, the BBC screened a drama called Fair Game. It was the story of a young couple's trip across northern England against the backdrop of 1970's football world cup and British general election.

It was broadcast on the eve of 1994's world cup. I recorded it on my video and enjoyed it several times before making the mistake of lending the tape to a colleague. She taped over it!

I'd love to see Fair Game again. It included a wonderful performance by Prunella Scales and an evocative soundtrack of 1970 music. Please, BBC, show it again!

The leaders' debates: a good idea, but get them right in 2015

Britain finally adopted leaders' debates in the 2010 general election - and life may never be the same again.

The three 90 minute debates transformed the fortunes of Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrats. They confirmed Gordon Brown's weakness in an era when easy charm pays dividends. And they posed a serious challenge to David Cameron, who surely assumed he was bound to become Britain's next prime minister.

But the series of debates was far from perfect. The third debate felt like one too many, as the leaders bombarded us with soundbites and questions were repeated from the first two encounters. (All three debates included a question about immigration.) The ban on audience applause or heckling didn't have as much an impact as I suspected it would, though it probably added to the boredom of the final debate. And, above all, the debates had an air of unreality as the leaders pretended there would be no great pain to come whoever wins the election. 

So debates are here to stay. And that must mean that no political party will ever again risk a leader so unsuited to debating and engaging with voters as as Gordon Brown. 

General election 2010: The Guardian asks readers which party it should support

The Guardian has asked readers and staff for their views on which party (if any) the paper should support in the 2010 general election. Editor Alan Rusbridger (@arusbridger on Twitter) posed the question of Friday in the wake of the second leaders' debate.

I was impressed by the paper's attempt to engage with readers. But the initiative underlines the bizarre and frankly disreputable tradition in British newspapers of telling readers who to vote for. Why should a paper tell readers who to vote for - even if they've asked their views first? 

The Guardian is far from the worst offender. The Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph are the media wings of the Conservative Party, and lose no opportunity to distort the news to encourage readers to vote Tory. But, as I posted in May 2008, the Guardian published a clumsy piece of propaganda urging readers to support Ken Livingstone in the London mayoral election. (Not that it helped Ken: he lost to Boris Johnson.) The Guardian even tried to influence the 2004 US presidential election with a similarly ill-judged operation to persuade voters in Ohio's Clark county to reject George W Bush.) 

It is simply grotesque that the media and politicians take any notice of The Sun's decision who to back in an election. Yet last week's decision of James Murdoch to invade The Independent's offices to protest at that paper's innocuous headline, 'Rupert Murdoch won't decide this election. You will.', shows how high the stakes are. The Murdoch clan really do think they have the right to influence an election. Their attempt to bully a newspaper that barely sells 100,000 copies a day shows concern that that this election could, just, be the one that breaks the political power of the media.

The response of the Mail and Telegraph to the rise of Cleggmania following the first leaders' debate was instructive. They both resorted to smears about the Liberal Democrat leader. As I posted last week, social media helped blunt the impact of the smear campaign with the clever #nickcleggsfault campaign. If the papers had been interested in genuine examination, why didn't they pursue the question why the Lib Dems hadn't returned donations from crooked donor Michael Brown? That would have been genuine journalism rather than political propaganda.  

Let's hope the people vote without being bamboozled by the media on 6 May. 

The TV and social media election

It was billed as the social media election. Yet television - invented the year my father was born, 1926 - has electrified Britain's 2010 general election campaign.

Nick Clegg's performance in Britain's first leaders' debate a week ago catapulted the Liberal Democrats into pole position as the party for change. For seven days, Labour and the Conservatives have agonised how to respond. Should they attack Clegg or ignore him? Should they play the man or his party's policies?

Tonight's second televised debate was eagerly awaited. Would Nick maintain his lead? Would the two other party leaders perform better?

I thought all three leaders did well tonight. Interestingly, Irish journalist Christine Bohan said on Twitter that she'd kill for a leaders' debate of this calibre with Ireland's political leaders Cowen, Kenny and Gilmore. (Thanks to Orlaith Finnegan for a retweet of this.) Brown, Cameron and Clegg were impassioned and smart.

I blogged recently that talk of a social media election was overplayed, as BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones became a digital election reporter. I don't think Twitter will win the election, but it has complemented the role of the TV debates. And it's giving fresh power to the people and the political parties against the deeply biased old print media. The brilliant #nickcleggsfault viral Twitter campaign, mocking the Tory press's smears about the Liberal Democrat leader, rattled the Daily Telegraph, which was forced to defend its smear against Clegg earlier the same day.

Here's to next week's final debate.

Not a plane in sight: five days under clear blue skies

For five days, Britain enjoyed surreally clear blue skies as the sun shone and aircraft were banished from the skies by the ash cloud from Iceland's volcano.

Motorway signs warned: "Heathrow Airport closed". Towns and villages for miles around Britain's busiest airport discovered tranquility and birdsong. And a clear sky was made even more radiant by the lack of aircraft vapour trails.

But the five day respite from the skies came at a price for travellers. The flying ban left hundreds of thousands stranded around the world.

It also changed my idea of news. On Tuesday evening, 'plane lands at Heathrow' was the dominant story on news bulletins. Reporters thronged the terminal to talk to passengers as if they were celebrities. Meanwhile, the media demanded the Government 'do something' - though they weren't sure what.

Opportunistic politicians such as the Conservatives' Theresa May criticised the Government and the aviation authorities for closing our skies. But you can imagine what they'd have said if our airspace hadn't been closed and an aircraft had been lost as a result.

Hounslow, Isleworth and Richmond are now getting used to having the planes back. Here's a time delay image of jets heading for Heathrow over Richmond Green one evening in 1990.

 

The election leaders' debate: making up for our democratic deficit?

History was made tonight as Britain held its first leaders' election debate. (Or more accurately, the first debate between the three biggest UK-wide parties.)

Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg got off to an uncertain start, with Clegg nervous as he opened the debate. But the Liberal Democrat leader must be delighted with his performance, as ITV News and YouGov both proclaimed him the winner.

That said, the BBC's Nick Robinson made a fair point: debates have no winners. We all watch with our own prejudices and values. Labour's Alan Johnson said Brown was the victor, while William Hague said Cameron came out on top. I think they're wrong, but who am I to say? The real test will be how the leaders came across to millions of voters, especially in marginal seats.

I didn't think Cameron was as bad as some have argued. But his curse is to be seen as the successor to Tony Blair. We're suspicious of slick politicians, after discovering from Blair that that smooth-speaking politicians are the last people to trust. And the Tories have been so muddled in their thinking (slash spending? cut taxes?) that no one knows what they'd do if Cameron moved into Downing Street after 6 May. (Lesson from the past: Thatcher doubled VAT in 1979 despite not breathing a word about this bombshell during that year's election campaign.) 

The debate reinforced the view of many of us that Britain's electoral system is fundamentally unfair. Some people's election votes carry far more weight than others, which is outrageous. We must never repeat the travesty of 1983, when the Liberals and SDP won almost the same proportion of the vote as Labour but got a fraction of the parliamentary seats. I hope that the three debates help nudge the British public to share their votes more evenly, to force a fairer voting system.

The other lesson, for me, was that social media made the debate far wider than the three men in suits, watched by a studio audience told not to cheer, applaud or boo. I loved seeing what people were saying on Twitter, and sharing my thoughts and weak jokes. It made up for the ridiculous, Orwellian rules constraining the debate. (Are the politicians really so frightened of the public that they need such protection?) We've got another three hours of debate before polling day. It should be surprisingly interesting.