Former news editor here. I have spent a loooong time thinking about how to help my beloved news industry find a payment model that works. I've become convinced that a "cable subscription" model has more promise than a micropayments model.That's a good point, and I started to mention that earlier myself. But not having any experience in the news industry, my first thought was that publishers might not want that kind of model. My thinking was that some publishers might look at it as effectively "revenue sharing" (and I guess it would actually be so in many ways) and having some outlets subsidize others.
Under the cable subscription model, you pay a fixed monthly fee for access to a large number of "channels," and in return you can access those channels as much as you want. Under the hood, that subscription fee can be doled out to each channel based on how much it's accessed, or divided equally, or by some other method in between. But to the end user, it's an all-you-can-eat buffet, and they just don't need to think about it. Part of the fee they're paying is for content itself and part of it is for the convenience of not having to regulate usage.
I could see this working as long as there aren't too many such services, or we're back to just a variation on the first problem. Much like I subscribe to multiple streaming providers (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc.) I could see paying for maybe 3 or 4 such services, if the content quality justifies it.
Something that might work is something like what Prime does... you pay your base Prime fee, you get a bunch of free stuff, and then you can add on "add-ons" that are, relatively speaking, fairly inexpensive. Amazon has suckered me into about 7 or 8 "add ons" to my Prime account, including HBO, Showtime, Shudder, and several more. Since each is fairly cheap in isolation, it's been easy to click the "add this" button. Now if I sat down and did the math to see how much I'm actually paying Amazon a month, I might start looking to cut some, but up to this point, I haven't...