• Ad Age, Monday, November 13, 2006 12 PM

Ad Age's top editor has an idea for how NBC can save "Studio 60" and experiment with a new business model that ultimately might help save the whole business: Ask people to pay for it.

Editor Scott Donaton suggests setting a price of $1 or $2, or even $3 per episode. With $7.7 million viewers, even if fewer than half pay a buck apiece, it would cover the cost of producing the lavish prime-time drama. And NBC can still sell ads on the show to high-end advertisers interested in paying a premium to reach an upscale audience.

"I know what you're thinking: You can't run ads if you charge viewers. Just ask HBO," Donaton writes. "But that's bull. The newspaper and magazine industries thrived for more than a century on exactly such a dual-revenue-stream model in which readers understood that the advertising kept the cost of the media product affordable."

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