030176.com : The Life of Mads Kristensen

In times of economic crisis there is of course a lot of talk about how media companies are going to survive with both subscribers and advertisers jumping ship faster than you can say “Titanic”. Maybe a place to start the conversation is to do as Scott Karp does and look at the media economics from a case driven perspective. He has done a post on how value equations have dramatically changed, which I think is absolutely stellar. Especially one quote caught my eye: People ask why no one wants to pay for news anymore, referencing the decline in newspaper circulation, when in fact that misrepresents the value equation. People were paying for newsPAPERS, which contained a lot more than news, and they were also paying for newspaper delivery, which is a service. This begs the question if media companies have been asking fundamentally the wrong questions all along in the search of a reason for their current predicament? What if people never actually did want to pay for content but were only willing to pay for the convinience, offers and service of delivery? I can relate myself. When I cancelled my subscription to Berlingske Tidende months ago it was because of a lack of delivery. I felt I didn’t get WHAT I PAID FOR. Not once did I think about the actual news content of the paper in that context. Now, that I think is worth an extra thought or two.