what happened to aol, prodigy and compuserve? >> prodigy died. that was a deserve the death because they were more of a one way broadcast service, not very to mcginty users wanting to contribute. compuserve was acquired by aol. aol was the upstart around that time. prodigy and compuserve was the leader. aol bought time warner and the merger kind of fell apart. now, time warner is spinning it off again and it will be reborn in some other way. it certainly has no where near the power that it had in those days. one of the interesting things, you noticed i was explaining the pricing and the pricing was metered pricing. you got so many hours for so many dollars. just a few years after that, the world wide web became open to people and came into existence. except for the fee that you have to pay every month for access, which could be $40 or $50 a month, it is not cheap, the actual use of the content is not metered by time or by what you are doing for the most part. this is right at the heart of a gigantic debate and a gigantic business issue. >> switch

compuserve was acquired by aol. aol had been the upstart at that time, compuserve and -- aol bought time warner and the merger kind of fell apart. and at that time warner is spinning it off again and it probably is going to be reborn in some other way. it certainly has nowhere near the power that it had in those days. but i think one of the interesting things, whereas you noticed i was explaining the pricing and the pricing was metered pricing. you got so many hours for so many dollars. and then maybe so many features and then it went up. and of course, just a few years after that, the worldwide web became open to people and came into existence. and except for the fee you have to pay every month for access, which can be 40, $50 a month, it's not cheap, the actual use of the content on there is not metered by time or by what you're doing for the most part. and this is right at the heart of a gigantic debate and a gigantic business issue right now. >> which is what? >> well, the issue is, if you're producing a service

pay by the minute to read stuff and at the time people were paying over $5 an hour for aol and compuserve and then it went to this -- well, we're on the web and we've got some people using it and we're making a little bit of money in the '99 period. maybe it's an opportunity on so they went to dismissive to maybe an opportunity to now because of 10, 15 years of poor execution being terrified and when people are scared they take sort of two forms. some of them are defiant like we're going to go down with the ship which is very noble, i understand. but also stupid 'cause you're going to die. they're going to go down with the ship and we're seeing it happen as newspapers close. there are some literally frozen in the media business. they know it's over. they know the titanic is sinking. they see the life rafts and they don't do anything. >> like katherine who i thought was i don't know -- were you there -- >> the publisher of "the washington post." >> i thought she was very smart. she's kind of savvy, sensible and she described herself as being open-minded. she was open-minded towards steven

or compuserve. then it went to maybe it's an opportunity?so they went from dismissive to maybe it's an opportunity to now -- because of 10, 15 years because of poor execution being terrified. when people are scared they take sort of two forms. they seem like they are actually -- some of them are defiant. like we're going to go down with the ship, which is very noble, i understand. also very stupid. they're going to go down with the ship. we've seen it happen as newspapers close. and some who are literally frozen, some of those people in the media business. they know it's over. they know the titanic is sinking. they see the life rafts and they're just looking, don't do anything. >> katherine was, i thought -- >> plush irof the "washington post." >> very smart. savvy, sensible and she described herself as being open minded towards steven briles' idea of putting all newspapers together behind some pay wall and charging access to them all entirely. >> 10% of their content and 10% of the people who pay and he has productions of the wealth that wi