Guardian’s media site MediaGuardian.co.uk will be requiring registrations from March, as planned. This follows last year’s introduction of premium services for one of the biggest news sites in UK. The site section plans to remain free, barring registration…

In a site note: “As part of the development of MediaGuardian.co.uk we are planning to introduce registration from March 8. We are aware that excessive online form-filling is a pain, so we have tried to keep the registration process to a bare minimum. As an incentive, we are offering those who register for the site before March 8 the opportunity to win one of four 20Gb iPods.”

Simon Waldman, the director of digital publishing at Guardian Newspapers had told me in discussions last year that the registration for media section was always the plan, as it made sense to cash in on the valuable audience. Arguably, among all the breakout brands that the site tried to launch over the last few years (EducationGuardian, SocietyGuardian, among others), the media section was the most successful, with big traffic from UK and even US audiences.