AR&D Reinventing Local Media

"Mobile" has become the popular focus of media companies looking for ways to extend our brands and make a little cash along the way. Like so many other wonderful English words, however, this one has other meanings, including the cute little devices that dangle above the cribs of infants. The object here is to get and hold the attention of little Susie, and in some ways, it's an appropriate metaphor for what's happening in the world of the Mobile Web. In this news this week are stories of various publications creating iPhone and/or Blackberry applications and charging people to use them. This is the typical subscription model for scarce content, and it's going to disappoint a great many people. David Kaplan wrote for PaidContent.org that many publishers are hoping to garner incremental ad revenues now and charging for the application downstream, while others, like People Magazine, are going straight to the subscription model. Mark Golin of people.com told Kaplan that the paid iPhone app decision was easy.

"If you stop and think about it, in the midst of everyone complaining that they've been giving everything away for free online, Itís so hard to get people to pay, this is a perfect starting moment to do it the other way," Golin said in an interview with paidContent last week. "The way we look at it, People is a premium brand. Readers will pay more for it on the newsstand, they'll pay an average of $101 a year for a subscription. We always hear the same thing in focus groups. ëEven if I do read something somewhere else, I always go to People to see if itís true.í So, we felt, why not charge for it?"

The application costs $1.99 a month, which doesn't seem like much, but it adds up quickly when other sources of news and information are added to the mix. Time, Conde Nast and Hachette Filipacchi have all jumped on the bandwagon with plans to launch their own paid apps as well. The Weather Channel offers a Blackberry application for a $12.99, 3-month subscription, which provides the following:

• Location Tracker
• Interactive Maps with User-Controlled Weather Layers
• Home Screen Temperature Indicator
• Ability to share weather with address book contacts
• Personalizations such as location nicknames
• Improved user-interface and navigation

Frankly, I view this as an opportunity for local media companies — especially TV stations — to get between the Weather Channel and its growing influence at the local level by offering something similar that is ad-supported. I say that because mobile devices are already a significant financial burden, and I mean significant. My mobile bill is substantial, and the only "app" that I pay for is my GPS navigation system, which I use all the time. Steve pays for the Major League Baseball app, because "it gives me original, web-centric content. I can listen to all the games wherever I am, and it sends video updates as they happen." I think there's an expectation by consumers that access to mobile information — like access to the Web itself — includes access to the content on the Web as well. This is why we're willing to pay for high speed connectivity or access to the Mobile Web, so I don't think it's a safe assumption that people will clamor for paid content via mobile anymore than they do via the wired Web. It's understandable that publishers — because they feel "burned" by not getting compensation for their online content — would want to create applications that require a fee, but that cellphone bill isn't a money tree. There may be hard-core fans willing to pay for access to special applications, but as a general brand-extension play, paid mobile applications are just wishful thinking.