Friday, December 23, 2005

Jason Calacanis, CEO of Weblogs Inc., has a list of predictions for 2006. While there are lots of those, Calacanis' successes (his latest was selling Weblogs Inc. to AOL) make his list worth reading.

I was interested in his prediction that Howard Stern would help raise Sirius to 5 million paying subscribers, now that he's moved over to the No. 2 satellite radio network. Some of Calacanis' readers commented on his predictions list that Stern probably can't do that because moving to paid radio "takes him off the cultural map."

That's an interesting thought. But if someone in media goes behind a paid subscription wall (as the likes of op-ed columnists Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, et al from the New York Times also did recently), must they "fall off the map"?

I don't think so, as long as their personalities remain a strong presence in the free-media world. Stern, Friedman, and Dowd need to offer up something to non-paying fans, in my view. Sirius would be smart to offer lots of Stern for free on the Web -- the occasional webcast of a Stern interview or program skit, a blog by him, maybe a free weekly podcast. All of that will keep him on the cultural map while also promoting the paid service. NYTimes.com could stand to offer up more of Friedman, Dowd, et al for free to keep their global profile high and encourage more paid subscriptions to TimesSelect.
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