Newspapers - to pay or not to pay?
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2015
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Despite widespread predictions of their demise and amid falling numbers of readers, newspapers are still with us. How are they adapting to the challenges of digital technologies? The industry is split on the issue of whether or not to charge readers for online. What is the best business model for newspapers to survive and prosper? Evan Davis and guests discuss.
The guests this week are: John Ridding, Chief Executive of the Financial Times; Ashley Highfield, Chief Executive of the Johnson Press and Andrew Miller, out-going Chief Executive of the Guardian Media Group.
Producer: Jim Frank.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Evan Davis and thank you for downloading this programme. In this edition of the |
| 0:04.5 | bottom line, I'm looking at the British newspaper industry. Hello and welcome to the programme. |
| 0:10.3 | Now, we're all witness at the moment to an interesting tournament and it is going to be |
| 0:14.5 | fascinating to see who prevails. It's the contest between different strategies adopted by different |
| 0:20.3 | newspapers as they strive to thrive |
| 0:22.6 | in the digital age. The main dailies in the UK have seen sales fall, print sales fall, by what, |
| 0:28.9 | about 40% since 2000, but they battle on, some free, some guarded behind a paywall, some in between, |
| 0:36.9 | all still in print, but for how much longer? |
| 0:40.4 | With me are three people who should know better than most. |
| 0:43.3 | What fate the industry faces all run major newspaper groups, |
| 0:47.3 | so let's meet them. |
| 0:48.3 | And first up is Andrew Miller, chief executive of the Guardian Media Group. |
| 0:52.7 | Outgoing, actually. Where are you off to, Andrew? |
| 0:54.9 | I'm looking forward to two months to re-equate myself and my family, as someone said recently. |
| 0:59.2 | And then working on three or four things at the moment for the next move. |
| 1:02.6 | Right. |
| 1:03.2 | And the big names are Guardian and Observer. |
| 1:06.8 | But just give us the business structure of Guardian Media Group, |
| 1:12.8 | because you came through AutoTrader. |
| 1:13.6 | That's right, yeah. |
| 1:16.4 | Which has actually been the cash cow to some extent for the group. |
| 1:22.0 | Yeah, so the group is owned by trust, and the trust's sole objective is our journalism in perpetuity. |
... |
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