Adding Fees and Fences on Media Sites

Now, however, there are growing signs that this free ride is drawing to a close.

Newspapers, including this one, are weighing whether to ask online readers to pay for at least some of what they offer, as a handful of papers, like The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, already do. Indeed, in the next several weeks, industry executives and analysts expect some publications to take the plunge.

Rupert Murdoch, beyond charging for access to The Journal, has talked about forming a partnership with a single search engine, which would pay him for the rights to scour the news and entertainment programming produced by his company, the News Corporation, rather than letting all search engines crawl his sites. Also Hulu, which is owned partly by Mr. Murdoch’s company, is considering charging viewers to watch some of the TV shows it now streams free.

Magazine publishers, meanwhile, have banded together to try to create their own version of the iTunes store, aiming for a day when they can sell enhanced versions of what they have been giving away. And more and more media companies are planning to charge for apps on iPhones and other mobile devices, as well as on the Amazon Kindle and other e-readers.

Media companies of all stripes built their business models on the assumption that advertising would continue to pour into their coffers. But with advertising in a tailspin, they now must shrink, shut down or find some way to shift more of the cost burden to consumers — the same consumers who have so blissfully become accustomed to Web content that costs nothing.

So will future consumers look back on 2010 as the year they finally had to reach into their own pockets?

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