ESPN Asks For Skin in the Game, Goes to Paid Model for Some Shows

How refreshing to read this morning in Mediapost that ESPN thinks online viewers should pay for some content. The sports media mega-brand is now asking consumers to pony up if they want to watch two of its sports-debate shows at ESPN.com -- "Pardon the Interruption" and "Around the Horn." (That's former Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti, a talking head on "Around the Horn," at left.)

In asking consumers to pay for content, ESPN is breaking with the Internet tradition of keeping online content free in the hopes that ad revenue can fund everything. In fact, ESPN might expand the initiative to other content; it's also thinking of asking consumers to pay to stream NBA and Major League Baseball games. I've long found online publishers' and broadcasters' seeming inability to charge consumers for content deeply troubling, so I hope ESPN is successful in asking consumers to put some skin in the game. According to MediaPost, the shows will only be available online to ESPN Insiders, who pay $6.95/month or $39.95/year for premium subs.

The free-content explosion of the Internet era has had two major downsides. First, it should seem obvious that ad revenue can't pay for everything. It never has for other relatively-targeted media such as magazines, newspapers and cable TV, where audiences are divided into ever-smaller slices based on their demographics and passions -- passions that you'd think consumers might want to shell out some money to indulge. Only network TV and radio have ever pulled off the ad-revenue-only stunt over the long term.

Second, giving into the content-should-be-free mindset devalues all content. It reduces its value to what advertisers are willing to pay instead of letting consumer interest bid up its potential value. If a paid online-content model had worked for the New York Times or the Washington Post, for instance, those media properties might not be in quite the fix they are today. Of course, they didn't work, in part, because consumers have come to believe that online content should be free. The failure of TimesSelect is but one in a long list of examples.

There are also plenty of other arguments against putting up obstacles between online consumers and their content. Many blogs, including this one, are less likely to link to WSJ.com because some of the content isn't free. However, I'd like to think that the encroaching downturn in the online ad market, and the fact that there is higher quality content online now than ever before, would make consumers occasionally feel that content is worth paying for. Maybe that will happen, someday.

With that in mind, ESPN's initiative faces one huge problem, and that's timing. When the consumer's new mantra is to conserve cash, the last thing he or she will want to do is find more things to spend money on.