Wall of Bable

The big media moguls just came off a "conference" where the #1 gripe was so-called free content (it's not free boys if it's ad supported). This has been a bug up their presses since debs used snail mail to swap how-to-land-rich-guy magazine articles. The internet simply gets moguls even more tightly wound.

I mention this because they are very much aware that for pay-gate models to work, every single player must adopt them. Hence the recent announcement from Rupert Murdoch that his properties will no longer be free, following a darker one from the Associated Press. Expect to see more in the months ahead as the big players close ranks.

Since the net has essentially reduced distribution (but not production) to zero, any wide scale walling off of content opens the door to at least one ad supported player to thrive, and as a non-fee destination become gargantuan, making the pay models irrelevant. The moguls know this and will try to block with new copyright laws and work "incentives" (read onerous contracts. Somebody will always crank out this stuff if desperate enough). It remains to be seen how effective any of this will be but keep an eye out for congressional action, particularly with respect to copyright, anti-trust and employment legislation.

I expect things to proceed much like they have however with players continuing to exit the business and a general shake-out proceeding until some semblance of balance is reached where advertising itself can support pricey content with unpaid or hardly-paid-but-dedicated bloggers taking on much of the see-and-post local stuff.

Things will just be a lot noisier for a while as big media whines loudly about the unfairness of it all and congress flops around trying to appease them.

- js.