Cyrillic Partners

Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul extraordinaire, decided to keep the Wall Street Journal behind an online pay-wall, dispelling rumors it would be free after his purchase of the product.

Silicon Alley Insider deconstructs the reasons to keep it a pay-to-read publication:

• Not giving away a growing revenue stream of $75 million + in free money.
• Preserving the brand’s exclusivity.
• Continuing to charge premium CPM rates for a known audience.
• Preserving the value of the print paper for a long as possible (subscribers will be less inclined to drop their subscriptions if they have to pay for the content anyway).
• Keeping your options open (once you go free, you’re never going back).

Author Henry Blodget’s analysis is misses a few things:

• Is anyone, in 2008, going to drop their paper subscription because they can get it free online? No. The paper buyers are nostalgic oldsters who enjoy the pulp between their fingers or the way the WSJ looks sitting on their desk.
• Murdoch actually said that SOME parts of the publication would remain behind the subscription pay-wall. Not sure what that translates out to, but it could be an effective compromise that actually captures MORE than the $75 million Blodget points to.
• Is it really true that once you go free you never go back? I’m not so sure. Consider that many “premium” brands will give a four-week trial subscription before yanking it away. The hope is that you get hooked (or, more likely, that you forget to cancel your trial and it rolls over into a subscription).

Whatever Murdoch is up to, it’ll probably make money.

[Image of a lady’s man from Forbes.com]

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