Moving Still Media

The excitement over the iPad and the age of the tablet is not only built around a convenient and more engaging content experience.  It’s also generating enthusiasm as a way for publishers and media companies to confront the everything-free-online approach that has dominated the web.

Magazines are planning to improve the user experience by combining the graphic design of print with the interactivity and multimedia capabilities of digital, in hopes that this will add enough value for readers to go back to the practice of buying edited, self-contained content packages (formerly known as “issues”).  The first step here is to lure readers away from web-wide search engines and social network referrals lining up content as a stream of ad-hoc articles from wide-ranging sources, and bringing back the professional editor who assembles a cohesive experience.  This also means cutting off the in/out hyperlinks to relevant content published elsewhere – something that has made the web so engaging, addictive, and time consuming.  Much of this content will also be exclusively packaged for specific platform distribution, even though it’s all coming through the internet – a trend Forester Research recently elaborated on in an article titled “The Splinternet Means the End of the Web’s Golden Era.”

To provide a self-contained, edited, chargeable package, the content “apps” will download from an app store (discussed as a bookstore or magazine rack).  It looks like most are aiming for a price of $3.00 an issue.  Magazines have long provided print subscriptions at far below cost, hoping to scale up enough to attract ad revenue.  In the best cases, typically fashion and high end lifestyle magazines, many of the ads are also perceived as an attractive form of content due to the stylish photography and dramatic art direction.  So the value to consumers has always been very good.  For this reason, iPad publishers hope to be able to charge more than half of the print price, while the elimination of paper and physical distribution removes more than half of the cost.

Magazines going digital are not alone. This week MediaMemo reported that Hulu is planning to charge for viewing their content on the iPad, which builds on thoughts from Lou Lesko. The same content available for free through browsers, will require a subscription on the iPad. The flash requirement for the web browser content may help in differentiating the channels and preventing access to the content for free on the iPad’s browser, again pushing users into an app with more control by the distributor as well as a more rich experience.

With magazines and Hulu moving in this direction, it’s inevitable that others will follow. The fact is that offline revenue streams have been subsidizing content creation for online viewing, and as the web and digital distribution kill off those other channels (print, broadcast, radio, etc…), online digital content will need to start carrying the burden of generating the return for content creation itself.  Stay tuned.