MQT: Could All News Be Free In Five Years Time?
With an increasing amount of free newspapers appearing in the market, will all news, particularly with regard to traditional paid-for newspapers, be free in five years?
This was one of the subjects up for discussion at MediaTel Group’s latest Media Question Time event, and the question garnered mixed responses from the assembled panel of industry experts.
Guy Zitter, managing director of the Daily Mail and group commercial director of Associated Newspapers, was, unsurprisingly, confident that paid-for news will still have a strong position in the coming years.
Zitter said: “If you take my own example, at the moment the Daily Mail takes £250 million pounds a year from circulation, so that’s the bit that’s not free. Advertising constitutes less money than that, so from the perspective of paid-for newspapers, we cannot sacrifice those circulation revenues.
“Yes, some newspapers are losing circulation. I’m very fortunate, my particular publication isn’t. But are we able to get rid of that huge element of revenue? The answer is no. Do we believe that there is sufficient loyalty to continue with that as a methodology? The answer is yes. So all news will not be free in five years or 10 years or 15 years.”
Of course, no discussion centered around the current media climate can ignore the power of the internet and Richard Eyre, chairman of the IAB, made clear the problem posed to newspapers by online.
“If I can rephrase [the question] and say, will it in five years time be possible to get perfectly good news free, well the answer to that is you can get perfectly good news free now. That’s the great problem for the papers including the newspaper whose board I sit on, the Guardian,” said Eyre.
He also pointed out the problem of employing journalists to produce copy, which on the one hand goes on a website free of charge yet on the other goes into a newspaper which carries a cover price.
Eyre added: “You’ve got a generation growing up who are used to getting things free off the internet. The remarkable thing is that online is free but those same people will expect to pay for the same content when it comes to their mobile phone in a vastly inferior form.”
Jim Hytner, now group marketing director of Barclays and previously of ITV, rounded off the free news discussion by pointing out that there is more to a newspaper than the simple delivery of news. “People pay for the Daily Mail because it brings something over and above news and that’s called brand value,” he said.
“People choose it and decide to pay for it because it makes them feel good about themselves. I genuinely believe that people will always pay for something that makes them feel better about themselves and fits their lifestyle, which clearly newspapers, whichever one you choose, do. So, it would be a slippery slope for me if all news was free.”
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