Today, the Times took down the pay wall around from around its best content. The bet is that Rupert Murdoch will take down the wall around the Wall Street Journal. Jeff Jarvis comments best on the decision here. Doc Searls adds good sense here.

The business model based on making content scarce is over. No one leading a media organization will be able to say to their board - “I am following the Times” Any board member can ask the CEO of any media organization - “So what then is our business model?’

The points I would like to make are these:

• All business models must be based on something that is legitimately scarce. Today, no matter how expensive it is to make, content will become freely available quickly. So much music is free that you cannot legitimately charge much for a song. So much film is free that you cannot charge much for a move. So much information is free, that you cannot charge much for it (Britannica). This is a reality - so you have to get over it and find another area that is legitimately scarce where you can find value. So where is it?
• Content is approaching infinite - one of the areas of value is to be able to find what you want quickly. Google has done well by seeing this at the macro stage. Finding value = value. So offering navigation and advice on content will only increase in value, as the range of content expands.
• Niche will beat general in this area. Just as Life magazine gave way to specialty mags, so those who provide navigation for niche will do better. Book of the Month Club broke even. But the Military Book Clubs and Gardening Book clubs thrived - their fans bought everything and participated in finding and promoting new content
• People will pay small amounts in this new world for having the content “Their Way”. 3 billion purchases of songs on iTunes shows us that if - you offer the navigation - you offer the ability to then use the content as the customer wants: not streamed but usable to listen or watch any time - AND you make it easy to pay for and download - people will buy - AT A PRICE.
• BUT most of all - as we see in the niche book clubs - it is RELATIONSHIPS that are really scarce in this machine and alienating world that we now inhabit.

Here is Jeff’s eloquent summation of this point:

It’s the relationship that is valuable. It’s the relationship that is profitable, not the control of the content or the distribution. That is the essential media moral of the internet story. It has taken 13 years of internet history for media companies to learn that, to give up the idea that they control something scarce they can charge consumers for, but they’ve finally learned it. That is the lesson of the death of TimesSelect.

Last week at KETC we had a pledge night where we offered the 50 films that we had made of our members who had sent in their stories on WWII. Taking the calls - ROTC students. Showcased: not announcers but KETC’s production staff. Helping out - Many Vets - some in uniform. St Louis started to come together that night in the Studio and out in the city. The night was all about real relationships. And oh yes - the money was good too. Here is a broader view of how KETC is learning to connect in a more natural way with its members.
At KETC, we are learning how to make a real connection and how to help the people of St Louis have their own stories told well and shred back to those that love and care for them.

I was in Columbus last week where WOSU invited in many vets and their families who also had shared their stories. We watched a preview of The War and then a film of many of those in the audience who had told their story on a show that WOSU made that was like Antiques Road Show. Here Vets or family members told their story and showed us their memorabilia. You can see some of them here online. This is what it looked like at the fabulous COSI facility.

We are finding that doing our best to find out how to create a much closer set of relationships is leading us to the moment when we will solve the question - what is the operational answer to a business model based on the true scarcity today of real relationships