In Wired, “Web Publishers Eye Your Wallet,” Adam L. Penenberg chats with Pat Kenealy, CEO of International Data Group (IDG), which publishes over 300 computer, game, and info tech-related magazines. Kenealy thinks it’s only a matter of time before premium web publications start raising their gates and asking for money. The conventional wisdom is that charging for content, or even asking readers to register, is suicide. But Kenealy points to cable television for evidence that people can get used to paying for something they really want:

“In 1955, TV was free,” Kenealy said, “and two generations later most people pay for it. There was a built-in reluctance to pay for TV until it got so much better than broadcast. That’s what I think will happen with the internet.”

With cable, one monthly fee gets you access to hundreds of channels. You don’t have to fill out dozens of subscriptions to dozens of different stations. Except for premium channels, everything is more or less set. Web publishers need to figure out a similar system. KeepMedia is a site that is experimenting with this. I would bet that eventually cable will merge with the web into one standard service: basic cable/web over broadband. Your premium channels (sites?) – in addition to HBO and Showtime – might be The New York Times, The Economist and The Atlantic, while basic cable/web would include Discovery, Comedy Central, MTV, ESPN etc., along with Forbes, Wired, Knight Ridder and Tribune newspapers, Reuters and hundreds, even thousands, more. A few of the more popular blogs might be thrown in there too. There will always be the free web too, just as there’s free television and radio, but I agree with Kenealy that we’re going to see a migration of many web publications toward a cable-style model.
See also, “web news as gated community” on this blog.