Ft. Lauderdale, FL -- (SBWire) -- 12/19/2013 --Felix Gillette reported last week that Bloomberg Businessweek declared 2014 the “Year of the Paywall” for the news industry. Sure enough, everywhere you look in publishing these days, you see news organizations ranging from Politico (and its Capital New York offshoot) to the new tech-oriented website the Information experimenting with online-subscription models. “I would not start a media company today based on advertising alone,” Politico Chief Executive Officer Jim VandeHei told Gillette. “I think it would be crazy.”

Last week, the Online Publishers Association, an industry trade organization, released a study that highlighted the various ways newspapers and magazines are using paywalls to shape and expand their businesses.

The group conducted interviews with executives at Condé Nast, Gannett Community Newspapers (GCI), Harvard Business Review, the New York Times (NYT), Time (TWX), and The Wall Street Journal (FOXA). A paywall is a system that prevents Internet users from accessing webpage content without a paid subscription. Newspapers have been implementing paywalls on their websites to increase their revenue, which has been diminishing due to a decline in print subscriptions and advertising revenue.

While paywalls are used to bring in extra revenue for companies by charging for online content, they have also been used to increase the number of print subscribers. Some newspapers offer access to online content, including delivery of a Sunday print edition at a lower price than online access alone. News sites use this tactic because it increases both their online revenue and their print circulation.

The revenue model is moving toward paid content and more than fifty percent of all media outlets will utilize a paywall by 2015. In the next six months hundreds of radio stations will bring their on-air and online commercial content together to avoid being listed separately in the ratings. A new Arbitron policy went into effect that combines the data as long as both the on-air and streaming content are a 100% simulcast in the home market of the station. The streaming broadcasts are not money-makers without a paywall. Radio stations can immediately turn out of market listeners into profit centers. Swishu, based in New York City, is poised to capture the majority of the print and radio market due to a low entry cost.

Requests for the report made before January 31, 2014 will be sent free of charge upon publication. To receive the Paywall Data Report register at: http://trcutlerinc.com/paywall-data-report.php.

About Thomas R. Cutler
Thomas R. Cutler is the President & CEO of Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based, TR Cutler, Inc., (http://www.trcutlerinc.com). Cutler is the founder of the Manufacturing Media Consortium including more than 5000 journalists, editors, and economists writing about trends in manufacturing, industry, material handling, and process improvement. Cutler is the most published freelance industrial journalist worldwide; Follow Thomas R Cutler on Twitter @ThomasRCutler.

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