Tumblroth

It’s become a common complaint from media execs that they screwed up on the Web. Their sites are all beautiful and people come in droves, etc. But users, of course, expect everything to be free. Information may want to be free, but the publishers and producers didn’t have to make it quite so easy. Water wants to be free, too, but you don’t see any fewer $1.50 Fiji bottles on grocery shelves.

Old discussion. (In Internet years, this is like debating who was most responsible for steering Arch Duke Ferdinand down that wrong street. It happened. The trenches got built. History.)

What’s new and interesting is watching the media execs try to avoid going down the same road with mobile. I was talking yesterday with the head of programming at MobiTV, Ray DeRenzo, who mentioned that everyone he’s talking to about putting their shows on the phone want to do it via subscription. Since consumers were used to paying for things on their phone, he said, the thinking is they won’t flinch when asked to chip in to watch the NBA draft on their Palm Pre. Forget collecting eyeballs. These days, it’s a rush for dollars. Even the NYT recently said it was ready to jump back into collecting fees — at least when it came to mobile. The digital head of the NYT recently told Bloomberg:

“Mobile offers a better opportunity for paid content. For publishers to offer their content for free in the mobile platform forever without getting paid very much money, I don’t think it’s going to be tenable.”

What’s weird about all of this is that the pay models can only work if the mobile web is kept separate from the regular Web. Otherwise what’s to stop someone from just using their mobile browser to check out the NYT’s website and read for free, or go to YouTube and see the clips they want to see? Consumers are clearly desperate to have full web access on their phones. CNNMoney.com blogger Philip Elmer-DeWitt crunched the numbers today: The iPhone, with it’s rich browser, commands nearly 70% of smartphone web traffic, though the phone itself makes up only about 45% of the market. Will they be just as eager to use a browser that can’t get to certain sites?
Unless the mobile operators, browser makers, and mobile OS companies decide to build an impenetrable walled garden, I don’t see how information, even over the phone, stops its move toward free.