Magazines and newspapers are continuing to lament their dwindling circulations and inevitable deaths. Their web sites may or may not charge for content. They are losing money. It's a problem. Want to know how to fix it?
Part of the problem with media today is that it is incredibly disorganized and all over the place. Many people have subscriptions to an assortment of media such as: The Wall Street Journal online, Financial Times newspaper, The Economist magazine, on-demand pay-per-view movies, etc. The problem is that a consumer must go directly to each medium they want access to and pay for each separately. In other words, it is not easy for consumers to consume media. If there was one central place in which one could subscribe to everything all at once, perhaps consumers would subscribe to more media. That is why I propose centralizing all media subscriptions in one spot to make things fast and easy for consumers who largely have no time to leisurely shop for and subscribe to magazines, online access, newspapers, movies, internet, tv, etc. Since cable tv/internet providers are ubiquitous in being common to almost all households, the easiest thing would be to throw subscriptions onto the provider's bill. Not only does it make it easy for consumers, but it also keeps tabs on which subscriptions are due to expire and when. In fact, Time Warner already has online bill pay so adding this would not be a monumental endeavor.
Media could be sorted by category for consumers to simply check boxes:
Cable TV
☒ All Channel plan
☐ 100 Channels plus HBO, Showtime
Internet
☐ Earthlink high-speed
☒ Roadrunner high-speed
Telephone (landline and/or wireless)
☐ Unlimited calling plan
☐ Wireless plan
Magazines
☐ Wallpaper
☒ Dwell
☐ The Economist
☒ The Week
...etc.
Magazines Online
☐ dwell.com
☒ economist.com
☐ cosmopolitan.com
☐ theweek.com
...etc.
Newspapers
☒ The New York Times
☐ The Wall Street Journal
☐ Le Figaro
...etc.
Newspapers Online
☐ www.wsj.com
☒ www.nytimes.com
...etc.
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