Brand loyalty in the wwwild west

As soon as I started reading chapter 7 I thought of an oligopoly with a big price diffferential and wondered how that worked… then I saw it mention on p. 148. Top pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer still command a higher price for their drugs even after competitors like Ivax introduce much cheaper generics. That’s a great illustration of brand loyalty, and compensation for the original drug developer for their learning curve, or research and development (pp. 149-50). Can’t that same concept be applied to online aggregation of traditional media? Newspaper staffs do the research, reporting, writing and publishing, at significant cost, then find their work re-published (for free) on Yahoo, Google or 100 other news portholes. It’s also interesting to compare media monopolies in the digital age; the New York Times commands dominant market share in New York and across the country in print, especially on Sundays. But online it draws half as many visitors as MSNBC – and less than Yahoo, CNN.com and AOL – all of which “borrow” NY Times content http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/chartland.php?id=899&ct=col&dir=&sort=&c1=1&c2=1&c3=1&c4=1. Maybe that’s why conglomerates like General Electric, Post-Newsweek, Paramount and Disney are chucking TV holdings and investing much more in cross-platform brands (like Disney) and new media.