The new conventional wisdom is that sooner or later, consumers will have to start paying for some of the stuff they currently get for free on the Web.
But will they actually pay up? Here, the conventional wisdom is not so helpful. Nor are studies predicting consumer behavior.
So now that the economy is officially growing again, when will marketers start spending again? It can’t happen soon enough for ad-supported companies (and their employees). Today’s unpleasant news: Magazine heavyweight Meredith says things are getting better, but they’re still worse than last year, which was pretty bad to begin with.
Condé Nast, which shuttered four magazines this week, said it won’t be cutting any more titles. But that won’t be the last of its cuts: The publisher is looking to cut costs by roughly 25 percent at all the magazines it publishes, likely leading to layoffs in many cases.
Today’s example doesn’t come from a magazine per se, but from the company’s digital group, which let go of “more than” 15 people, Expect more to come from Condé, and from other publishers, in coming weeks.
Is Time Inc. building a Kindle Killer? Nope.
A report suggests that Time Inc. wants to get into the hardware business and produce its own e-reader.
That’s something other publishers, like Hearst and News Corp., are actually doing or have at least mulled. But multiple sources familiar with the Time Warner unit’s thinking say that’s not the case here.
Sony did indeed have a bit of news to announce at the New York Public Library: Its most direct challenge to Amazon’s Kindle to date. Like the Kindle, the “Daily” reader will feature a wireless connection–Sony will use AT&T, while Amazon uses Sprint. And unlike current versions of the Kindle, the Sony device will feature a touchscreen.
But it will come at a price: The device will retail in December for $399. That’s $100 more than the current price of Amazon’s Kindle 2. And that price point is almost certain to drop in coming months.
Vanity Fair’s prescient decision to put all of Todd Purdum’s Sarah Palin profile on the Web last week paid off big on Friday. But it would have done even better had the story featured a slideshow with photographs of attractive young women.
Newsflash: More data confirm that ad spending was really bad last year. But ad execs–at least those in certain industries–say things may be bottoming out this spring.
The last time Amazon held a press conference in New York City was in February, when it introduced the Kindle 2.0. Now the company has scheduled another one for Wednesday morning at Pace University in lower Manhattan. Expect a new large-format device that’s optimized for reading newspapers and magazines.
Condé Nast is shuttering its troubled Portfolio title and accompanying Web site. The publisher informed its staff of the decision at a meeting this morning. “The company is deeply grateful to Portfolio’s readers and for the broad support of marketers and executives all around the country,” says publisher David Carey.
Condé Nast is reportedly “having the worst year of any publisher,” the New York Post reported last month. So, the fact that that CEO Chuck Townsend sent out an all-hands memo entitled “Managing Through Challenging Times” must have sent a shiver through the magazine empire this afternoon. The good news: He doesn’t mention layoffs or reorgs. The bad news: He warns of “difficult decisions” ahead.
If the Kindle is the iPod for books, do we need a Kindle for magazines and newspapers? I’d say no. But publishing heavyweight Hearst disagrees and is going to come out with an e-reader of its own, according to a published report.
The Time Inc. CEO gets a lifetime achievement award from an industry trade group and uses it as a platform to argue for her medium’s longevity. I hope she’s right, but I worry that she’s not.
Are you one of those people who enjoys buying magazines at stores or newsstands? Then you might have a hard time grabbing a copy of Time, People or Sports Illustrated next month: The magazine industry’s biggest publisher is squaring off against the industry’s biggest distributors.
Want a break from gloom and doom about the state of the magazine industry? The industry’s trade association is happy to help. Or at least, to try to help, with some sort-of-true but not-that-relevant happy talk.
U.S. News & World Report, which used to be a weekly news magazine, then a biweekly one and is now a monthly publication, is going to try producing a weekly magazine once again. Online. And it wants you to pay up to read it. I appreciate the effort, but I don’t see how this one pans out.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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