“Last month, Condé Nast played show-and-tell with its concept of a digitized magazine. Today it’s Time Inc.’s turn: The publisher is demoing a concept version of Sports Illustrated it says will be able to run on whatever tablet Apple or any else has up their sleeves,” Peter Kafka reports for AllThingsD. “Eventually, the publisher imagines that it will port all its titles into the new format, which it says will be ready for primetime by the middle of next year or sooner.”
Direct link to video via YouTube here.
Full article here.
Can’t see it working unless the subscription price included the data usage cost. Otherwise, a publication that was a bandwidth hog could end up costing a fortune. And it would need to be downloadable, a streaming solution would be unattractive (or unusable) to slow connections. Ad hoc connectivity to any cell network, based on subscription to a publication, not an end user contract with the wireless carrier might be an approach.
@original Jake and others,
Look at the terms of service on news websites…most people don’t read it…Here’s one
http://www.pathfinder.com/help/hmember/agreement.html
The Wall Street Journal DOES have a paywall (you are mistaken) but they allow some sampling…up to five articles…but Google was just sued and LOST. You may find THIS article of interest:
http://technology.globalthoughtz.com/index.php/is-google-bowing-down-to-murdoch/
If a site puts up a pay wall…say Sports Illustrated..and says for $5 a month I can access anything on the site…but I can’t send links, can’t reproduce the content on my own site…I would not be disinclined to pay to get quality writing, great photography, great video, expert analysis…
But then ESPN comes along and says…We will offer you the same thing for free. Except the pageview/online ad model doesn’t result in much money…and people rip them off and put photos on their own sites, steal stories and sell their own ads next to them.
Believe me…with SOME making money and others not…the legal action will begin. There is simply no goddam way that Big Media is going to just fade away and give it up to an army of bloggers who have been stealing content as a way of life for the past few years. That’s gonna be curtailed.
Finally, it’s NOT the hardware…that’s secondary…it’s the structure of the agreement between the content producer and the consumer.
Watch television? Broadcast TV runs commercials. Cable charges a fee. Even movies have commercials now…lots of them. The long free content ride is going to come to an end in many forms just like Napster did. There’s WAY too much money riding on it to have FREE continue.
Well said, pr
I’ve tried to make the point several times that in the end, you have to pay the reporters in the field. If local papers/stations aren’t making it to pass the info on to AP, and AP doesn’t have the news to share with Reuters, then Reuters won’t share with AP, and AP will have to pay more to CNN, who gets some of their info from NY Times, who will have to cut back like the Washington Post yada yada yada, then people will soon start to miss content that they thought was ‘free’.
Whether you like him or not, Murdoch is right. Ad base can’t hack it.
What I see possibly happening is related fields join together with an exchange rate and share content to their subscribers. SI may get some info from ESPN and FOX, but not the entire in-depth story.
It will be messy for awhile, but I really think (and have for 8 years) that the shake up will give the consumer a better picture of the world and their interest, and that the sooner a vehicle like an Apple tablet comes along for them to get behind, the better.
iTablet MaNiA lives on. And it’s just as stooopid and boring as ever.
Please tell me that EVERYONE noticed this Sports Illustrated ad is a:
C A R T O O N
No device was used other than a computer that animated the:
C A R T O O N
What is wrong with you iTablet looonies?!