With so much free content available online, traditional media companies are tying themselves in knots trying to find a way to translate their businesses to the web. There was a grudging consensus among one set of panelists at Ad:tech NY conference today that although there’s no competing with free, it doesn’t mean you can’t make money. For the most, part, reps from Condé Nast, Forbes, A&E and The Weather Channel suggested that publishers don’t have to completely give up their reach-and-frequency-based models, but they do have to diversify their revenue streams considerably. In any case, it’s mostly about survival now, as there is still no replacement on the horizon for the old methods.

The question of free versus paid was posed by the panel’s moderator, Patrick Moorhead, Razorfish’s director of Emerging Media, who noted he gets Hulu and Huffington Post for free and asked why should bother with a website that puts up a paywall?

Josh Stinchcomb, publisher at Condé Nast Digital, referred to fellow CN exec Chris Anderson’s “fremium” philosophy, though he didn’t completely endorse the concept. Stinchcomb: “My colleague Chris would say you shouldn’t try to compete with free, you should find some other way, such as your time. Online CPMs are a fifth of what we get in print. We should take a hard look at how to enter the mobile space and not make the previous mistakes that came with giving everything away on the PC web. Ultimately, It’s harder to charge because you don’t control the distribution. But you have to look to free content for consumers to some extent and look for what you can charge for. Some of those other possible revenue streams could include access to editors, access to information. Increasingly, we’re creating content for other brands, and American Express’ Open is a good example.”

Paul Jelinek, SVP, Digital Media at A&E Television Networks, disagreed with the premise of Moorhead’s question. “It’s not competing against free. It comes down to your business objectives. Hulu, for example, drives viewership and provides incremental advertising for us. It is a fragmented world and in our case, the objective is to distribute video in a smart and scalable way. We have dual revenue streams on TV: subs and advertising. That model will take off as part of the TV Everywhere strategy. Sports is going to come first in terms of premium opportunities and everything else will follow over time.”