Inside the (pay)walls: an allegory
John Mair
is a journalism lecturer and former broadcast producer and director. Twitter: @johnmair100
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Imagine.
Imagine you are a media mogul called, say, Mark Thompson, for the sake of argument. You control four national television channels, five national radio channels, three digital add-ons, three national regions, lots of local radio stations and a worldwide internet, TV and radio presence. Let's, again purely for the sake of argument, call you 'the BBC'.
Your content is premium and much admired around the world - a world in which broadcasting quality is no longer paramount. Your content has much value, so you decide to cash in on that. To charge - to test the market. Very simple: you just erect a paywall around it.
Technology makes this easy. 'The BBC' is no longer universally available but on subscription only. Many listeners, viewers and internet users join you inside the BBC paywall.
You get courage and more funds, so you buy a few national newspapers. One a tabloid, let's call it the Moon; one top of the range, the Old Times; and one supermarket trash, the World of News. They have big readerships and big numbers access them online. You monetise the newspapers by putting the BBC paywall around them as well.
Then you start to package and bundle it all together. You can get BBC sport on TV, radio and in newspapers as part of a 'BBC sport package'; or you can get entertainment on a 'BBC entertainment package'; or multiplatform news on a 'news package'. Simple segmentation. Or you can buy an 'all BBC package' - for less than the individual ones put together.
It all starts off cheap, but soon you find 'Mark Thompson' keeps offering you deals on more and more packages. Hard to resist: before you know where you are, consumers' annual spend is in excess of £400 on BBC packages alone.
'The BBC' finds it is the biggest broadcaster in Britain and can afford to buy any sporting rights and programmes it wishes; the sky is, well, the limit.
Finally, just imagine that instead of the gatekeeper of the paywall being the mythical Mark, it is somebody called Rupert - and it's not 'the BBC' - it's Sky ...
Imagination or a not-too-distant reality? You decide.
