• Dow Jones, Wednesday, March 4, 2009 12:15 PM

Online subscriptions, it seems, have emerged as the progressive business model of choice for flagging media and cable companies, whose shares have been depressed by the weak economy and by consumers increasingly spending their time online. While cable and satellite providers mull extending their subscription services to users online, some big content producers, like The Walt Disney Corp., are considering entering the subscription business on their own.

Disney Chief Bob Iger on Tuesday said he could see the entertainment giant creating a kind of online subscription club for the company's movie and television shows as a way to leverage Disney's brand online. However, Iger, who was speaking at a Deutsche Bank conference, didn't explicitly say that Disney was working on such a plan.

Iger's comments come just a few weeks after he said DVD sales slides were due to pressure from a slumping economy and the increased use of the Web for entertainment. "We're trying to find ways to make it work for us and not fight it," Iger said, referring to the delivery of content over the Web. "From our perspective, the computer is a very, very important place to entertain people."

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