There will come a time, possibly in the near future, when all the television and cable networks currently streaming their programming for free will finally throw up pay walls to access their content. It’s coming. You know it’s coming.
Monetizing the free content model is difficult. Blogs do it through some form of advertising. Webcomics do it through merchandising. Do these approaches work for the networks?
Thus far, the networks have tried to apply an advertising model to their streaming content. It works for broadcast. It should work for online. Right? The problem is that the web audience is a much different beast than your typical broadcast audience. Playing luxury car commercials during prime time makes sense for broadcast because those high powered execs you’re targeting are at home watching whatever crap you’re throwing up there because they can’t stand to talk to their wives or children. Luxury car commercials on Hulu? Um… no. People surfing the internet to catch up on their shows don’t give a flying fuck about luxury cars. If anything, they care about online shopping, places like ebay or amazon or the like.
Advertising works well on blogs because the ads are targeted for a very specific audience. If you’re reading Gizmodo, you’re getting ads for phones, laptops, speakers, the types of products you’re reading about anyway. Gizmodo attracts big tech geeks so they know to sell ad space to geek friendly vendors. Blogs can monetize with advertising because they cater to specific niches. Television networks try to cast a broad net and capture as many eyes as possible. There’s no room for targeted niche content on primetime. The audience for “30 Rock” covers a much broader demographic than the readers of Gizmodo. Attempting to target ads to that audience is almost an exercise in futility.
Merchandising works well for many webcomics. Fans are eager to buy t-shirts to show their geek pride and affiliation with their favorite comics. But when was the last time you bought a shirt related to “The Office.” Merchandising for the networks has meant selling DVD box sets of season upon season. But with those box sets showing up in rental places like Netflix and RedBox, box set sales are slowing. And no one’s buying shirts with Michael Scott on the front.
When ads and merchandising fail to generate enough revenue to sustain the free content model, it’s time to switch. Which is where the pay walls will come in. The networks can’t be making all that much on their streaming television ventures. Sure, their websites are probably clocking in more traffic now than ever before. But the free streaming audience is not a paying audience. We’re not clicking on those fucking car ads. We’re not buying shit in their online stores. We’re watching and we’re leaving to click on to the next free streaming show. We’ve backed the networks into a corner. The pay walls are coming.
The most straight forward pay wall for the networks to implement is a subscription based model. Viewers pay a monthly or yearly fee to access content. So here’s the big question that no one is asking. How much would you pay? Assuming that pay walls are inevitable, it might be a good idea to start the discussion now over what price seems reasonable. What price are you willing to pay? Monthly? Yearly? Or is there an alternate method for monetizing the free content model that we just haven’t figured out yet?
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