Subject: Re: New Century Network From: meyer@newslink.org Date: Thu, 20 Apr 95 02:36:10 PDT

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>Bob's right, of course! As usual, however, the newspaper titans are
>late to the game -- and have a lot of catching up to do. Netscape is
>selling three-month ad spots on its Web site for $40,000 a pop;
>Prodigy is selling ads on its home page for $4,000 a week. The
>fact that you've got a monopoly on local news in your geographic
>market won't mean anything to national advertisers shopping for media
>buys in cyberspace. Newspaper execs will need to do more than band
>together before big-money sponsors come knocking!

The secret, Rosalind, is that they've just created what amounts to an 
online news cartel. Play their game or go find your own news to use 
as a lure to get readers, whom advertisers will follow. And the new
online consortium has sufficient clout to control AP pricing. If AP
suddenly becomes prohibitively expensive to non-cartel members -- i.e., 
to "non-contributing" members like Prodigy -- where will the commercial 
online networks look for breaking-news content? UPI? These folks even
own a big chunk of Netscape. OPEC could only dream of being so well
established. 
____________________________________________________

ERIC K. MEYER                    meyer@newslink.org 
WWW NewsLink       http://www.newslink.org/newslink/
____________________________________________________


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