… yes if you have content worth charging for.

And, this brings me to a conversation i had a decade ago, while a channel was in the process of being launched. The channel was meant to be free to air and was designed for maximum reach. A few days before the launch I was asked if we could charge x per month (x was a figure greater than 10 – a lot in those days). The problem was simple, will someone pay Rs.X for something that was meant to be free – thank fully the promoters appreciated that perspective.

Will quality pay for itself ? It is anyone’s guess, because quality itself is a relative concept. Unfortunately – quality in content is often mixed up with esoteric, unreadable, stuff. And when you tell people you want ‘quality’ content – it conjures up visions of turgid academic writing , closed fonts, design from the 1940’s (where it looks like it is a manual typeset), no pictures, and the dryness of a tender announcement.

Which is why this is such an interesting experiment. NYT has used the drug dealer’s methodology of hooking customers. Catch them cheap (99 cents for 12 weeks) and then some $8 a month.

With content, i think it is important to get people to start thinking about paying. You may not charge – but if you are giving it away free, it needs to feel like a favour to the user. The sense that they are privileged in getting what your are putting out, for nothing.

As a consumer, I like the idea of free content. As a producer, I need to think of ways to make it pay – be it ticket sales, paywalls, monthly subs – whatever.  As someone who has produced content (in what ever form) for the best part of two decades if there is one thing i know it is this – someone has to pay for it – Either the advertiser, or the subscriber or Santa Claus. Given that the advertising pie is finite, and Santa Claus does not exist – that leaves the subscriber 🙂

Needless to say, i have purchased a subscription to the NYT. Let us see if i will renew it 🙂