There’s a funny story at The Australian today. The above is a screen shot and here’s the text that we can see:
AUSTRALIANS remain resistant to paying for online content and services and smartphone applications despite spending an extraordinary amount of time online outside of work and education, according to a global survey.
KPMG’s latest Consumers and Convergence Report reveals that while Australian consumers are happy to adopt new technologies, they are increasingly resistant to paying for the associated online content and services.
Oh dear.
Actually, there’s a few things going on in the business media landscape that it’s worth commenting on. Two major players have dramatically shifted their strategies with very significant outcomes for readers.
The first is that obviously captured by the above irony. The Australian has locked itself in a cupboard. The door on that cupboard is made of timber not glass so it is no longer possible even to peak inside. A few crumbs tumble through the cracks but otherwise, unless you’re a cockroach, you gotta pay.
It’s difficult to see this as anything other than a catastrophic failure of strategy. How it expects to attract new readers locked in a cupboard I have no idea. And if it can’t attract new readers, it will die in that cupboard as the baby boomers that hold the keys slowly dwindle.
Meanwhile, over at the Australian Finanical Review, we have the reverse. Having poached The Australian’s primary economic talent in Michael Stutchbury and appointed him editor, the AFR has leapt from the broom closet where it’s been gathering dust for a decade under the stewardship of former publisher Michael Gill.
The free content at the AFR has quickly become an essential daily treck for me and although they desperately need young talent, having watched it flee the broom closet for ten years, it’s good enough. It’s mostly reports offered free but they have also begun releasing some of their comment pieces. I suddenly find myself engaged with a paper I’d all but given up on. If I’m doing it so must many others be and the rumour is, suprise, surprise, that traffic has rocketed.
Needless to say, the AFR’s emergence into the light must be causing more than a little dispepsia at Murdoch head office. That the Murdoch loss-leader has adopted the AFR’s failed strategy just as it has sloughed it is…well…a little bizarre.
Meanwhile, online pioneer, Business Spectator, must also be pining a little for the return of Michael Gill. They need not worry too much in my view. I still go there as I guess others do. Not for the commentary anymore, which seems a delayed and lighweight version of MB, but for the news feed, which remains quite useful. Besides, the AFR should actually grow the pie.
Finally, Business Day, the combined effort of Fairfax metropolitan dailies is doing a quite respectable job of competing with the BS newsfeed, and has also aggregated an ecclectic mix of analyis and commentary including some worthwhile China material (and sometimes MB material as well). I visit there regularly too.
In sum the general offering has probably improved a little even accounting for the dissapearance of…what’s it called?…The Australian, that’s right.
Update
And, well , bugger me, from Business Day:
Australian business information and opinion website Business Spectator may be sold as part of a “strategic review,” the company revealed today.
Chairman and editor-in-chief Alan Kohler of Australian Independent Business Media, which owns the website and subscription-based online newsletter The Eureka Report, told staff today the company was undergoing a review of whether part of all of the company would be sold.
“We have had several approaches to buy our company, and the board and management have therefore decided that, rather than continue to field ad hoc offers, we should go through a proper strategic review process to clarify the position once and for all,” said Mr Kohler in a speech made to staff.
“The process is at a very early stage, but an Information Memorandum has been sent to interested parties and it could eventually result in a media company or investor buying some or all of our company – but only if we received a fantastic price,” said Mr Kohler.
