I’ll be frank… I really don’t think media companies charging for content is the way to go.  Let’s look at why:

One of the things that made iTunes and other music download services great is that they allowed people to purchase an individual song as opposed to an entire record.  People don’t mind paying for something they value, but they don’t like paying for other stuff they don’t value.  Up until that point, consumers had to “take the good with the bad” and so many either begrudgingly bought the album just for a single song, while others passed on the album even though they wanted a song on it.

Another thing that made iTunes a success was that Steve Jobs (correctly) estimated that the hassle factor of illegally downloading a song was more expensive then a song priced at $0.99.  And he was right.  The iTunes model has proven definitively that most people are willing to pay a small amount of money for something of value, even when free versions exist, if the paid version is more convenient/fun to own.  With news content, the free version is the norm not the exception, and the convenience/fun factor is missing from the ownership experience.  As such, it’s unlikely that people would be willing to pay for content since it’s likely available for free elsewhere without much hassle.

In order to change this reality, the news companies are going to have to develop differentiated content.  CBS’ 60 Minutes is a good example of this idea as their content and investigative journalism style is unique among news sources.  The more that news companies can differentiate themselves in similar fashion, the more they’ll have the ability to charge for content.  Barring that, I predict that most paid models will not ultimately succeed.