Subject: Re: Message to Price ratio? From: cassidy@panix.com (Michael Cassidy) Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 13:51:17 +0100

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At 12:14 AM 4/19/95, S. Finer wrote:
>I would be interested in hearing more about the low message to cost ratio
>paradigm vs the high message to price ratio paradigm.  Could you unpack
>this notion a bit?  Does it mean moving toward PPU , and away from low
>price subscription combined with advertising revenue?
>
>On Tue, 18 Apr 1995, RASCHKE wrote:
>

(snip)

>> The point I keep making, but don't wish to harp on it, is that all
>> information technologies have a history of driving costs, and pricing,
>> into the ground.  To try one more analogy, the internet is to information
>> what discount stores were to retailing...with the exception that a lot of
>> the itnernet information will always be given away.
>>
>> My theory of the "new market" is that if someone can figure out how to
>> embed quality products into a context of free information, they can
>> charge significantly for them.  But they need to know how to perform the
>> packaging.  So far old media culture is obsessed with the paradigm of low
>> message to price ratio, which worked in a proprietary system.  One must
>> invent models of high message to price ratio...

        The only cost being lowered on the Internet is the physical
production costs; I still pay writers, designers, editors, copyeditors,
production people, photographers and many others. I still need hardwware
and software. Sending a writer and photographer to Paris to stay at a
4-star hotel and eat at several expensive restaurants still costs.
Researching, editing copyediting still cost. The production (film, paper,
inks, press time) costs for a print magazine are lot and these go down. The
real question with an online publication is how to price advertising, and
how to substaniate subscriptions. This goes back to other discussion: hits
are not enough to sell advertising there must be some way to substaniate
that someone is really behind those hits.

        Will there be companies to audit online magazines? Gee, someone
wrote a description of a machine to hit a site with phoney name and
addresses; well gee, I can do that too; within a day my site can take 600
million hits.

         What you sell on the net is not information; but filtered
information! Dont go to the NY Times site if you wish to read AP news raw;
go there to read the "news" as seen by the editors at the Times. There will
be travel sites, fashion sites, ski sites etc hopefully part of the "high"
information ratio is a point of view or quality level. The strenght of a
publication is that the reader knows the publication, and hopefully knows
if they can trust the publication. This is a very difficult trust to build;
it is not something most journalist take lightly. Information is not raw
data spilled into someone's computer. I spend my money on a motorcycle
magazine to read their reviews of the lastest bikes so that I can make a
intelligent decision when I buy (well, also to dream about bikes); but
reading just any bodies comments about a bike will not carry the same
weight. The real challenge is to find the right structure for an online
publication. If its just the same as the print magzine who cares! What a
bore! Plus I think that would fail. There is so many new ways to aid the
reader; new material to present; new ways to present the material.

Mike Cassidy

           Pi/nta Guinness le d'thoil!!!  Go raibh maith agat.
                          cassidy@panix.com



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