@ pcAds: Hearst Wants Tablet Magazines To Adopt Movie, TV Pricing

paidcontent reporting
New device opportunities should allow Hearst to drive its digital revenue model away from advertising reliance, and toward 50/50 equivalence with readers’ payments, the publisher’s president, David Carey, told the paidContent Advertising conference.

“The next wave is almost entirely focused on more consumer revenue - and the early stages look good,” Carey said. “The words ‘paid’ and ‘content’, connected, are my two favourite words in the English language. The technology enables it.”

Cable TV-style recurring revenue is key. “Tablets allow us to get into continuous service monthly bill,” Carey said. “We’re selling a lot at $1.99 a month—$24 a year—which is often more than we get in print. We don’t have to get in to this funny process after a year where we ask readers, ‘Are you sure you want to continue with us?’”
Amongst the device opportunities, turns out tablet magazines is also a long-tail business. “Approximately 40 percent of single-copy sales occur after the physical copy has gone off the newsstand,” Carey said. “We have near-term consumers, we’re getting very good long tail activity - that’s totally new for us.”
That prompts Hearst to think in a more long-term fashion than the monthly publishing cycle…
“The magazine industry can learn a lot from the movie business and the windows they have for their content… theatrical, international, premium, pay-per-view and then it ends up on the Turner channel at 3am,” Carey told panel moderator Pam Horan.
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-pcads-hearst-wants-tablet-magazines-to-adopt-movie-tv-pricing