Who moved my nuts?

Many, many moons ago I helped start Associated Newspapers online efforts. Back in those days (mid-90s) there was much debate about how traditional publishers could embrace online media – but essentially two models were emerging: replicate the content online (the most common model) or develop extensions to the core titles that maybe used some content but were likely to originate their own approach ‘in harmony’ with the parent publisher.

Oh, and then there were the others, such as Time Out, who were famously terrified about what online was going to do to the bottom line.

So a decade and a bit slips by, and online is now a major medium. Could overtake TV spend shortly. Over in the US it seems to be getting the blame for ‘killing’ newspapers.

And still we find the print publishers trying to work out how to make their digital strategies pay for the demise of traditional income sources.

The most recent example of this hit me this morning – Asda (!) are launching the wonderfully named ‘Asda Digital Newsagent‘. Yes really.

Asda Digital Newsagent

Seems to me to be a very similar model to Zinio, who I believe do pretty well in the US. And who have a pretty decent (free to air over Safari) version online for the iPhone.

But come on – from a consumer point of view, do I really want to ‘read’ a magazine on my computer? Books, well yes of course – on a handheld, for portability. And I can see some value in the iPhone pages at Zinio… though the ‘free’ price tag about the content suggests no-one expects you to replace buying the magazine that way.

Magazines are typically consumed as a treat. I remember when, at Associated, we were launching the ill-fated Charlotte Street site for femails (sic). My wife, perceptively, pointed out that you couldn’t take a website into the bath and flick through the pages. It’s a different type of experience entirely.

Meanwhile, iGizmo has set up a decent online magazine, which looks at first glance like some of the Asda Digital Newsagent titles, but adds considerable extra functionality to the flat magazine style.

So Asda’s version simply sells you an image of each magazine spread, wrapped in a bit of navigation to dress it up. And then charges you exactly what you’d pay for it in print.

I may well be proved wrong on this, but I really don’t see how this can possibly produce a worthwhile business model. For readers OR for advertisers (the ads (especially the double page spreads) are even easier to skim past than in print.

I, for one, will not be buying.

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