Two of the most ambitious media industry efforts to retrain consumers to pay for online content set out their plans on Wednesday amid a surge in accessing free content via the internet.

Time Warner said it planned to begin a test in July to offer some of its top cable network shows online to about 5,000 subscribers of Comcast, the top US cable operator. A broader roll-out will begin in the fourth quarter.

The test is among the first concrete plans to evangelise the industry’s "TV Everywhere" strategy to make all cable network programming free on the internet, but only to paying cable subscribers.

Across town, Journalism Online, aiming to offer struggling newspapers a way to start charging for online news and entertainment, unveiled plans for its e-commerce platform.

This could enable newspaper publishers to convert about 10 per cent of their online readers to subscribers, while retaining 91 per cent of the advertising revenue their free sites currently generate, its co-founders argued. A typical 1m circulation newspaper, charging $7.50 monthly online subscriptions, could enjoy an $82.2m bottom line benefit within two years, they estimated.

Jeffrey Bewkes, chief executive of Time Warner, has staked his reputation on simplifying the way pay TV subscribers can access the same shows on all devices. "As we move through time, every multichannel network would be online and on broadband," said Mr Bewkes.

But the details have yet to be worked out, executives admitted, including how many shows to offer and for what period.

Although video consumption online is just a small sliver of overall television watching, the proliferation of more shows online could threaten traditional television advertising.

Time Warner and other cable network owners are in discussions with Nielsen, the TV audience measurement firm, to include online videos in a new aggregate ratings system.

Journalism Online would launch with "a significant number of publishers" this autumn, said Steven Brill, who founded The American Lawyer magazine.

In a move likely to broaden its appeal to bloggers, Journalism Online also said publishers could earn credit for referring readers to other sites.

The platform could offer a solution to newspapers, such as many UK titles, struggling to attract advertising for the large number of online readers outside their home markets, Mr Crovitz said.

The announcements came a day after Les Hinton, chief executive of Dow Jones, likened Google to a "digital vampire" sucking on the newspaper industry's blood. In committing the "colossal blunder" of giving content away online for free, publishers "gave Google’s fangs a great place to bite".

Source: FT

Labels: Journalism Online, monetisation, monetization, Time, Warner