The demise of the print media has been written about many times over in the past. While TV news is a whole different ball game, the challenges posed by the explosion of real time news on the Web have, surprisingly, been embraced by print media to bolster their business. But, till recently, news delivered on the Web by the mainstream print media wasn't to its satisfaction or that of the reader. Now, the big question is – will this year's tablet revolution be the harbinger of good tidings for print to finally make its online story work?

Recent developments such the encouraging sales of the Amazon Kindle Fire, the emergence of HTML 5 and the surging sales of Apple's iPad (coupled with iOS 5's ‘Newsstand' feature) have magazines and newspapers excited. Magazines such as Wired have seen several early birds flocking to their tablet offering. The big question for readers is does the tablet format make sense for them? And why is it such an exciting proposition for publications?

Stepping out of the pages

Over the last decade, news media companies have had a lot of promising new means to deliver content. First among these was the Internet, which helped speed up content delivery and increased the amount of content delivered. Readers had a great time and found themselves flooded with more free content from leading names than they could handle. Unfortunately, those delivering the content found very little flexibility in pricing it – readers who had been lapping up free content so far were very reluctant to pay for it.

For many traditional print media houses, the internet has so far been a voluminous experiment with little cash to show for it. The fact that they managed to deliver a lot more news a lot faster to the reader counted for little. The primary cash cow was the cover price that physical newspapers and magazines charged, coupled with ad revenues. Now, media houses hope that the tablet can be the missing link between the Internet and an actual hard-copy reading experience. They hope that the versatility offered by the tablet form factor will help convert a loyal ‘print' reader into someone who is willing to pay for the tablet version of the magazine or newspaper.

Flexibility and relatively low cost of delivery could make tab-tailored versions of content the preferred mode of delivery for publications.

News on tab

Number crunching indicates that the tablet experiment has already had some success. However, it is a nascent market and tablet and smartphone ownership makes it a niche product for news delivery. News Corp, which owns Wall Street Journal , has stated it has 2 lakh subscribers to its digital edition, accessing the content from the Apple iPad and Android tablets.

Financial Times also claims to have a similar number of digital subscribers. In 2010, they racked up 9 lakh downloads of their Android and iPhone apps. That number is estimated to be double its daily print circulation. Barring these papers, which have successfully built up impressive online reader counts while socking away a good portion of content behind a pay-wall, almost all Indian newspapers (and their foreign counterparts) have struggled to find a price at which their online operations warrant a more sizable bet.

The allure, however, remains strong, given the presence of a bevy of Indian magazines - mainstream and niche - through the Apple Newsstand, third-party apps such as Magzter, Newsy and social networking-oriented news apps like Flipboard, Pulse etc. . Struggling print players such as New York Times and The Guardian are also ratcheting their presence on tablets and social media. If the app-store downloads are anything to go by, there's a strong indication that a well-designed app for the tablet makes media content stand out from the crowd. It gets readers hooked in a way that a zillion favourite bookmarks on the Web could not. But does that translate into actual paying subscribers? Will advertisers be ready to pay a premium for embedded ads in apps?

The economics

As things stand, a publication looking to hop on to the tablet bandwagon pays a 30 per cent cut to Apple or a slightly lower figure to Google or Amazon. Maintaining a symbiotic relationship between content providers and app store owners will be a big challenge because of the lower ‘price versus revenue' flexibility that this medium offers.

The fast emerging social model which Facebook recently introduced has seen The Guardian and Washington Post rack up 4 and 3.5 million users respectively. The revenue potential is strong. Making content stand out as distinctly as possible and having users hooked to the content, provides a strong case for print media to present to advertisers as well . This is why news media organisations are excited about what a tablet can do for them.

By 2015-16, Gartner expects a tablet user base of over 500 million tablets, a vast majority of which will be sold in 2015. The sheer volume comes with a inbuilt captive crowd of content-seekers, many of whom are likely to be willing payers for tablet-based media content. One reason why early adoption might be hindered is because habits such as reading a newspaper are hard to change. Also, shelling out the upfront cost of a tablet is a sizeable entry barrier in getting readers onboard.

Challenges

But widening the base of tablet owners and getting more readers hooked to the medium will be the key to making this a viable platform. Tablets provide readers and content providers with a product which mimics the best of the paper and electronic medium much like the Kindle did for books. Colour reproduction and layouts, when designed for a tablet, outdo the appeal of the paper format. Also, the ability to throw in associated content such as archives and videos seamlessly makes the tablet a value-for-money proposition for media producers as well as the readers.

Getting the right balance between providing premium content and an affordable price tag for the tablet strategy is the challenge that remains for media outfits. But, at least we are speaking of the possibility of pricing content now. That is one small step for readers and one giant leap for the print media-kind.

>adarsh@thehindu.co.in

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