Print Publishers May Create a “Hulu for Magazines” - How stupid is that!

Response to nice Mashable article by Barb Dybwad - Print Publishers May Create a “Hulu for Magazines”

I'm not sure whether it's arrogance or ignorance, but what traditional publishers seem to be conveniently overlooking is that there has been a metaphorical earthquake at the foundations of their whole business model and this has nothing to do with Craig's List or Google poaching their classified advertisers either.

Previously, a few exclusives, timely features and a smattering of sexy imagery could lure an audience who would perhaps forgive what is typically a majority chunk of otherwise irrelevant content and advertising, which collectively provided a sense of mass and value in your hand. Online audiences no longer care about all the accompanying bulk and are only interested in the top slice of relevant content and can now skim that selectively in a relative instant. Without that 'captured' set of eyeballs, an online version of the same thing can't hope to deliver any advertising value, at least not in the same way.

A Hulu for Magazines is as ridiculous as Murdoch charging for news content and is in my opinion tantamount to an online graveyard for a heap of publishing brands who, with some lateral thinking, (shown by UK Telegraph, Daily Beast, Huffington Post, WSJ) could actually re-align themselves and thrive. In reality, they'll find that each of them only has about 10% of their normal print content with any sustainable audience appeal and the ad value will be dumbed down and therefore diluted/ shared to boot. If this is their chosen path, why not call it what it is; which is an amalgamation of lots of brands under one roof and into one online magazine brand..... which I suppose may get bought cheap by Google or Microsoft one day anyway... and if they're really lucky, seemingly like so many these days, it will be at a greatly over-inflated price.