I thought premium had some potential. It just wasn't consistent and no real basketball info really hurt it.
I think its pretty clear that the only good (whether you like it or not, it is a good model) K-State premium is gp, but that was a different model. That was sort of ground floor and it went from a large magazing subscribing base to internet premium. Since then all the models haven't worked very well; first with kstatefans, then twice with ksufans. I just think its hard to take a free messageboard base and make premium viable b/c it changes the culture of the board too much.
I think premium can exist even with a free message board base. It all comes down to the quality of the premium content. I wan't a KSUfans premium member, but if that site had a few quality reporters that would report on a consistent and often basis, it would have been fine.
From the sounds of it, KSUfans had nothing even approaching that.