From Free to Fee

Most of us love the Internet. We use it to find movie listings, get the weather, read the news, watch videos, order merchandise, and a plethora of other daily necessities. Once we pay our ISP's to provide us with the Net, we want the rest to be free.

But, according to this Financial Times article, the current business model of most content providers isn't working. They're not making enough money on the advertising side to compensate themselves for the cost of providing their content on the consumer side.

The Post Register is like thousands of other papers across the country: in transition. As their traditional medium is becoming outmoded, they're working to find a venue to stay in business, but it's a risk to start charging for content in a cyberworld where most are accustomed to free.

Charles Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest model works well in capitalist America. The weak content-providers will fail, leaving more consumers to support the strong online companies, and the free model will be viable again.

So, on a Tuesday Neal Larson Show, we'll have a FlashPoll: Would you start paying for news and content on the Internet?

My prediction for the outcome will be an overwhelming "no" but we should have an interesting conversation about the future of the Internet.