Consumer are of course buying content – you don’t decide to buy Time or the Economist based on the number of pages – you buy based on whether you want to read the articles (avoid obligatory Playboy joke here).

Publishers are in fact selling either content or a vehicle for advertising. In the magazine model almost all are selling a vehicle for advertising – and they know a LOT about that vehicle and what percentage of the magazine can be ads before it starts losing readers. The cover price of Time has never come CLOSE to paying for the production of the content. The ads are where the money is.

But some magazines and almost all books are a subscription or one off model. The publisher is selling the content for a price. Free content on the internet is only free because it is still stuck in the advertising is where the money is model. Or it is crap. Some publishers are finding lead generation models rather than advertising – but it is still the same – the good content costs you somehow.

The reason newspapers and magazines are struggling is because the revenue from online advertising is so poor and online advertising is easy to avoid. Either they will figure out how to increase the ad revenues or they will find a new way to get money or they will fold.

But it is the content the consumer wants – not the medium.