David Worlock, Chairman of EPS, chaired a spirited discussion of the key methods that are seeking out ways to grow their revenue models for premium content. David tried to prod the panel as to whether publishing as we know it is dead and whether pay-per-view was the big way of the future, but the panel wasn't biting. Paul Gerbino, Vice President of Content Licensing for Thomas Industrial Network, sees a world in which the name of the game is delivering content to clients demanding it "how I want it, where I want it, when I want it." Paul has created very powerful channels for delivering ad-supported core business content to its clients via weblogs, allowing their news-oriented content to touch their users where they need it and to draw them into their portal products. Shahir Kassam-Adams, Senior Vice President for Strategy & Development at Thomson Scientific & Healthcare is creating growth for their subscription content by tailoring it to precise user requirements - for example, taking very wordy scientific monographs and restructuring them into modular piece of content that can be repurposed in many contexts. This allows Thomson Scientific, like many other Thomson divisions these days, to create solutions highly tailored to specific workflow needs. "What you find in a good solution is good content," Sahir notes, underscoring the need for user-oriented technology that helps professionals to make timely and critical decisions to be a focal point for creating content value.

For Jim Kennedy, Vice President of Strategy at the Associated Press, being a not-for-profit service supporting major news organizations worldwide doesn't diminish the need to focus on user needs effectively. From Jim's perspective technology is important but it's just one factor in understanding the user's desired desktop or portable view of content and working back from that point to develop products and services that fulfill those needs effectively. "We're capitalized to develop news, not technology," Jim notes, underscoring a point that the other panelists touched upon: the changing role of editorial processes. Today's editors need to become the central players in developing rich content that meets and audiences needs, pulling together content from a myriad of sources that tell a story. Resistance to changing the editorial function comes not just from the old guard but also from young journalism school graduates prepared more for an era of media elites passing us by than today's multi-purposed content production needs. Funny to think that one of the biggest stumbling blocks to growth in publishing at this point is the human ego.

While all of the panelists seemed to be open to the idea of new payment models, it's interesting to note how each of these major and diverse suppliers of premium content have found significant advances in revenue generation not by changing revenue models but by delivering higher-value products and services within existing revenue models. The new models of success are diversifying in the "hows" of patterns that content suppliers know well already and that are extended and enhanced by greater knowledge of users and contributions from users into their client bases. With the success of rights-protected content on consumer platforms the search for effective revenue models may yet take a few twists in the months and years ahead, but for now the extensions to content value within and across existing models seem to be winning the day.