This week, Rick Edmonds at Poynter, Ryan Chittum at CJR, and Mathew Ingram at Gigaom debated the state of the paywall at news sites.
Not surprisingly, there is little consensus whether or not subscription paywalls are a deadend or the wave of the future. However, there is one kind of paywall that I haven’t seen attempted yet. I haven’t even seen it mentioned — the package.
TimeWarner Cable has 17 different packages — collections of channels and networks (including NBC, my former employer), which are themselves collections of individual programs.
Would it be possible to replicate this model in the digital sphere? The Sports package? Financial? Entertainment? The Progressive package? The Conservative package? Maybe it’s already happening , but I haven’t seen it yet.
When you sign up at any site, you should be offered an opportunity subscribe to a collection of other sites simultaneously. Revenue shares all around.