Perspective: The new name of the media game

Do the big, pre-1995 media companies know the score? Do they see how the game has changed?

The New York Times says 135,000 people have subscribed to TimesSelect, its online offering which includes access to columnists and other fee-based daily content.

That would mean annual revenue of just under $7 million if each subscriber signed up for the annual rate. The New York Times Co.'s total revenue was over $3.3 billion in 2004, with expenses approaching $2.8 billion. Clearly, TimesSelect is far from a financial game-changer.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal, which has offered subscription-based online service for several years, claimed it had over 700,000 paying customers by the end of 2004. But it already had over a half million by the end of 2000. The recent growth rate of Journal online subscriptions doesn't bode well for TimesSelect growth beyond 2008.

If you assume that most of the Journal Online's subscribers don't get print as well, parent company Dow Jones & Company could see subscription revenues in excess of $60 million. It was Dow Jones that outbid other media companies and paid over a half-billion dollars for CBS Market Watch a year ago.

So Dow Jones is not in the black on its Internet properties just yet. Over the past five years, the company's stock price has looked like the eastern slope of the Rockies, as viewed from the south. Since early 2004, The New York Times has had an equally rough ride on Wall Street.

Major newspaper Web sites report increasing traffic, but will the revenue growth be enough to save the team?

CBS-TV, part of Viacom, made two Internet-related moves last week. It said it will provide news video to AOL.

In addition, CBS and NBC are offering prime time entertainment shows for purchase and downloading online. The shows cost 99 cents per episode, available after the first prime time airing. If you want some really old TV, AOL's going to sell shows like "Welcome Back Kotter" from the Time Warner archives. AOL's also going to create six genre channels from recycled material in Time Warner's TV archives. Will scheduled programming compete well with on-demand entertainment?

Most programs offered online are ratings winners, perhaps attractive to younger viewers. Television's key demographic is the 18 to 49 age range. The younger half of that age group is more likely to be online, on an iPod, on a mobile phone and not parked in front of a TV set. It remains to be seen if many viewers will pay for something they could have watched for free on TV if they really cared.

Biography
Harry Fuller is an executive editor at CNET News.com.

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[BDEEKMAN]

Proof that CNET is capable of intelliegent reporting

Leave it to an executive editor to show the scoffers that credible,
intelligent content can be found at CNET.

As a frequent reader of the content on the CNET news website, I
wish to express my disappointment in what appears to be a
growing trend towards hyped-up "news" articles and
perspectives.

While far from the majority of the content fits the category of
"tabloid trash" a disturbingly increasing quantity of it exists here
at CNET.

Mr. Fuller, I applaud your efforts towards, at a minimum, this
article. Please consider protecting CNET?s credibility by rejecting
the tabloid trash and wildly fantastic page-view sensation
content for more intelligent discussions of real-world media
such as you have produced here.