I’ve been ignoring this one, but people keep submitting it. BCG came out with a report over the weekend on a survey it did, claiming that about half of all people would pay for online news. It was amusing to see people react to this, as some reported it as “most won’t pay for news” and others reported it as “oh my goodness, a lot of people will pay for news.” Of course, the reality is that this is just a survey of what people say they’d pay for — and history has shown that surveys are notoriously poor indicators in terms of getting people to accurately reflect what they will and will not buy. Besides, just a day later, a totally different survey claimed that 80% of people wouldn’t pay for news online. The answer is that no one knows how many people would pay for content online, but I’d bet that the number is lower than what both of these surveys predict, and we’ll see that soon enough.
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