News/culture surfers will rejoice, but the mood inside the L.A. Times business office may be a bit more somber tomorrow morning. Kevin Roderick posts news that the paid-registration barrier between CalendarLive! and its users is finally being demolished and the entire website redesigned for a new launch at 5 a.m. Tuesday.
Faced with dwindling revenues and hungry investors, the Times erected the $4.99-a-month fee wall around its arts content and listings more than a year ago in an experiment with paid content. The idea was to push web users to actually subscribe for the paper (subscriptions to the dead-tree edition came with free CalendarLive! access) while trying to get them used to the notion of paying for the Times' online content.
It failed, natch. Information wants to be free, as the sad calculus of internet content goes, and they never pulled attracted paying eyeballs in the numbers hoped for ...
If my hunch is right, the Times' bottom line may actually fare better if the site lets all its users see CL! for free, and then sells the expanded audience at a higher premium.
The failure of the CalendarLive! experiment is a milestone in the paper's ongoing search for routes to a future beyond the costly limitations of hard-copy printing - somewhere in the realm of interactivity and RSS: Tribune Media Services is experimenting further with syndicating blog content from HuffingtonPost.com starting in June, and is said to be working on one or more blogs as a way of building online audience.
More thoughts Tuesday as the new site comes online. It can only be an improvement on the current finicky, cramped, headache-inducing cacophony of tiny, redundant links. Fingers crossed.
Posted by: mack_reed on Monday, May 09, 2005 - 08:18 PM
