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To prevent Apple or some other platform provider from controlling their future digital distribution, four media industry titans have joined
forces to develop open standards for a new "digital storefront" and "related technology." The founding equity partners include Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp. and Time Inc., though
the venture is welcoming other publishers to the table in exchange for greater exposure and a share of ad sales.
Calling the venture "Hulu for Magazines," MediaMemo reminds us that "all of this
is conceptual at this stage; the companies now need to go about the business of actually assembling technology that will let them do this," i.e., the hard part. (For one, Time Inc. digital boss John
Squires -- who will head up the unnamed venture while it searches for a permanent CEO -- thinks it will need to settle on a single standard.)
Before noting that the venture "has been
variously billed as 'iTunes for Magazines' (correct philosophically, but wildly overstated) and 'Hulu for Magazines' (incorrect, since Hulu is free)," ValleyWag actually admits that it could succeed. "Then again, it could fade into irrelevance in
months ... Somebody will make the dominant digital storefront for content like this, just like someone will make the dominant digital reader."
One obvious complication is competition,
including efforts that might involve the venture's existing partners. News Corp., for one, is still working on its own consortium, but Squires tells paidContent he isn't worried about it. "I don't know that that's
relevant to us," he says. "I don't think there's a question of how many ... It's a question of which ones bring the right product to market."
The venture also has to figure out how to
convince Apple and Amazon -- which, between the iPhone and the Kindle, presently dominant mobile content distribution -- to let others control the sale of digital media on their devices.
Publishing executives tell MediaMemo that Apple might be more receptive to the idea than Amazon. "Amazon has clearly designed the Kindle and surrounding infrastructure to be an end-to-end
experience, and so far, the company has been able to get publishers to play along," it writes. "But if Squires's JV ends up working as planned, publishers will have enough clout to set their own
terms."
Oh, and as Gizmodo points out, "All of this is based on the idea
that people will actually be willing to pay for these 'digital magazines," which it doesn't think they will be. "The magazine industry seems to think that by taking content that works perfectly fine
on websites -- text, images and video -- and mushing them into a weird version of page-based magazines, people will treat them like the old format and will be willing to pay for them. I doubt it."
Unless of course there's a new format, such as the one Time Inc. recently demoed for Sports Illustrated.