The first step in a revolution. Or a bold experiment doomed to failure?

So it's finally happened. After months of speculation the first of the UK national newspapers will start charging for online content from June.

It's a brave move which will be watched with interest by many different parties. And despite the confident soundbites coming out of NI there's no doubt that this is a high-risk move.

However it's not necessarily as risky as some are making out. Only the quality papers, which attract an online savvy audience, will be going paid-for initially.

TimesOnline currently has 1.22m daily users. Even if only 5% of these convert they would bring in £1.8m on a daily pass. The initial success of TimesPlus suggests that these numbers aren't just pipedreams.

Moreover the new Times and Sunday Times sites will be very popular with advertisers. In a similar way that paid-for papers bring in a better quality response than the freesheets so NI will have an effective monopoly in this sector and could theoretically charge accordingly.

If Murdoch follows through with his promise of improving content to differentiate his sites from other publishers' then NI may well succeed in stealing consumers away from the free sites. It's no coincidence that this announcement comes hot on the heels of the BBC's declaration that they will be significantly reducing their online offerings.

But it still feels like a very risky move. TimesOnline simply does not inspire the same brand loyalty as Guardian.co.uk, MailOnline and the behemoth that is the BBC. While there are so many other free alternatives out there it's hard to see what NI can offer consumers to put themselves far enough above their competitors to justify charging for content.

Chris Skone James, Senior Planner Buyer