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Paying to play: The Bee offers digital subscription
- Dec 04 2012
- 4
As Fresnoise hinted at in a recent post, The Fresno Bee introduced (today, in fact) a new digital subscription package that brings the Bee's various web products under one umbrella that the company can then monetize.
It's a shift in philosophy for McClatchy, but one that makes sense as the technology continues to change. Current trend estimates show 29% of Americans now own a tablet or eReader and the Fresno Bee (most newspapers in fact) are creating specific content for these applications. It make sense they get paid for it.
Chances are, many users won't notice the change. You still get 15 "free" views per month, so ... If you do notice, it probably means The Bee has some worth to you. So you should be paying for it.
While I am saddened by the loss of another form of "free" media (at least we still have AM/FM radio), The Fresno Bee has come a long way since it launched its orginal website. It's come a long way since the old Beehive days even.
All the info on the digital subscription and more can be found here.
4 Comment(s) for "Paying to play: The Bee offers digital subscription"
I finally got the E-Bee on my Android tablet, Whoo-Hoo! I love how the great big, complicated, wrap-around on today's Bee said, "it's Easy" to get the E-Bee or the Bee+ or whatever it is. Yeah, it's easy if Quantum Physics is easy. But, it is working and I do like it. I'm still learning how to navigate and enlarge.
The NYT started the monetization model: a few shallow views for free, but if you want deeper access you pay a small charge. I'm ok with that. I just paid $2 to watch the latest SNL episode. I was able to log on the next day on my desktop, which is a way better internet experience than a tablet. I still haven't got the Fresno Bee app for my little Nexus tablet.
Were you able to log-in eventually? Some people, especially those already subscribing to the e-Bee had some log-in troubles. I agree, there is a ton of options w/ the news subscription service. And that should be the goal, make the information as accessible as possible (while making a bit of money obviously).
I like that for us folks that get the hard copy we get the digital, too. If I'm out of town I can access the Bee from my tablet through wi-fi. I also like that every single ish and page of the Bee from 2008 till today is available to view. That's a LOT of content. There's some other features, too, It's quite complex. It'll take some time for me to get into all of it. The first day I couldn't even log in. I figured it was because of heavy traffic on the website..