Time Warner CEO hints at online fees for magazines

(AP) -- One of the world's largest magazine publishers appears to be having second thoughts about giving away most of its articles on the Internet.

Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes told an investor conference Friday that he doesn't think it makes much sense for publishers to provide their content without a way to recover the production costs.

But Bewkes didn't say whether Time Warner's magazine group, which includes Time, People and Sports Illustrated, is considering charging fees for access to its Web sites.

Many publishers, particularly in the newspaper industry, are drawing up plans to charge Internet readers to help offset a steep decline in ad revenue.

Ad revenue in Time Warner's publishing division plunged 30 percent in the first quarter.

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• dirk_bruere - May 29, 2009
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  Let me make a prediction - charging fees will cut readership by at least 70%, and hence advertising revenue also drop. It won't solve the problem.
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• ArkavianX - May 29, 2009
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  No contest!
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• vika_Tae - May 30, 2009
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  It does depress me, when these large, well established companies feel that they are so big, they can continue to cling to turn of last century business models, applied to the newer, paradigm shifting technologies.
  
  As I have said before, all that will happen is a handful of people will subscribe to these sites, rewrite the news that appears - likely in aggregate from several of them, to remove bias - and then post online for free, on ad supported sites.
  
  With a far smaller staff, and negligible overheads, these companies will take 70% of the audience the big sites used to have, and will be viable models for advertising supported news for some years to come.
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