There are a lot of sites (dozens, maybe) that I would be willing to pay $1-$10 a month for, except that I'm not willing to sign up for all of them individually, and not all of them are willing to sell me their information/services at a price that matches the value that they provide. It's not worth my time to manage each of those subscriptions on its own, and there isn't really a good way to manage them centrally, from the same interface.

The money is almost certainly worth it, but the time involved almost certainly isn't.

The vast majority of people don't want to pay and many of those that might are still put off be the little bit of extra effort/risk (enter credit card details?, sign up for an account?, ...) and will go look elsewhere instead.

And if if the money would be enough to make the enterprise worth while that is not his main point. He was doing it mainly as a fun side project to help others and it simply isn't fun any more. Maybe it could make enough money to make it worth while in a purely time/income based benefit analysis but he still would rather stop as it isn't enjoyable to him at this stage and if even he wanted to spend that much time/effort to make that money perhaps he has other projects he'd rather spend the time/effort on.

If the service truly could be made a going concern in that way he'll no doubt be inundated with offers to take over and try running it in that fashion, so you'll see the new pay service appear in short order.

I'm a huge fan of gmane, but I mostly use it by it showing up in Google results. I wouldn't feel like it was worth a subscription, and while a 50c charge per thread would probably be a fair reflection of the value for me, the friction would be way too high.

Free triggers a completely different response than 'stupidly cheap'.

Cheap still requires paying money, which is a barrier just for the act. Moreover, there is the fallacy that something free has an infinite value/cost ratio. (fallacious because you should look at value - cost)