Rupert Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation’s newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a ”malfunctioning” business model.
Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an “epochal” debate over whether to charge. “That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal’s experience,” he said.
Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, he replied: “We’re absolutely looking at that.” Taking questions on a conference call with reporters and analysts, he said that moves could begin “within the next 12 months‚” adding: “The current days of the internet will soon be over.”
Ha goodbye newspapers, don’t bother coming back
I really, really hope he goes on with this.
It will mean the beginning of the end for his media empire.
Over here in the UK this man wields enourmous power, all whilst hardly paying any tax at all. And polititians are too afraid of him to do anything.
Example:
About 6 months ago in the UK there was a huge vote in Parliament on a new law to allow police to detain suspects without charging them for up to 42 days. This was very, very contraversial, and it was thought that Prime Minister Brown could lose the vote. But with the usual political/career bribes & threats they got it through. There was a lot of bitterness in his own party about the tactics they used to get everyone to vote for it.
And it was huge in the media with massive coverage all day.
So what was our noble Prime Minister doing after this historic vote ? Well, he was at a lavish birthday party for the editor of the Sun newspaper(I use that term loosely, as it’s quite possible the trashiest most low brow paper in the world). Who owns the sun ? And who was at that party ?
Rupert Murdoch.
Hell, the Labour party even dragged Blair out of retirement just to suck up to Murdoch some more.
This man is dangerous. He is scum
troublemaker,
I don’t understand your math. If the average cost of production for prime time television is $3 million/hour, then no matter how many outlets the cost remains the same. Also, the viewership pie is still the still the same – no matter the slices. And not all content costs as much. Reality TV, Jay Leno, reruns. While there are an awful lot of channels, I really only watch 4 or 5.
If you are talking about the increased entertainment options – sure, now I can understand reduced viewership per production. There are only so many eyeballs and 24 hours in a day. Of course, worldwide, there are a lot of eyeballs. And as you said, there are cable, syndication and DVD revenue streams. And while most productions might not make a “profit”, they do support the “hits” which are wildly profitable. Seinfeld was making a million an episode. Of course, he is exceptional, but he couldn’t command that if the execs didn’t think there was still profit in there somewhere.
Anyway, probably most actors/writers and crew aren’t getting rich. But enough of them are making a comfortable living. And it seems to me, that enough are living a pretty good life indeed. Probably a bell distribution curve? Brings me back to what is a fair price and profit?
Back to topic. As long as content is available from multiple sources, then charging for said content is not viable. If the AP does tighten up distribution, then charging could work for original content newspaper sites. btw I rarely go to sites that even require registration – let alone subscription fee. Maybe Murdoch is applying a little misdirection.
btw I remember when “Tar Baby” Murdoch’s (at least that’s what Jimmy Breslin used to call him) New York Post was involved in a heated cross town rivalry with the Daily News in the 70′s. The Post, while entertaining, was tabloid journalism at best – although their sports section was quite good. My opinion of Murdoch, shaped during that time hasn’t changed much. An opportunist. He became American so that he could own a TV station. His journalism was not of high quality in Australia, England or America. He seemed not the most scrupulous businessman. Somewhat of a sharp angler – willing to do anything to make a buck. And while I now enjoy the Fox Network’s original programming very much, their news sucks.
@Troublemaker
“’2. The internet has never been about money. In fact, it is the one place where money doesn’t matter.’
Are you serious? What sort of insane nonsense is this?”
Free knowledge (wikipedia, google books, etc.)
Free software (download.com, sourceforge, etc.)
Free news
Equal access
And the availability of low cost resources (ebay, amazon.com, netflix)
Free education for the motivated
The internet is what you get out of it.
This site is run on WordPress, WordPress is free.
Corporate capitalism as we know it has been changing for years and the balance between corporate interests, private citizens and government interests is always a struggle.
In the world you claim we live in, the internet would have been pay for use like AOL or Compuserve with corporate ownership.
But that isn’t the world we have, the open internet won.
I wouldn’t ever give that fascist a penny. It’s not wrong to charge for this though this won’t work in the long run, it’s just wrong to support the fascism he represents.
#65 You sure have your definition of fascist right…NOT!
It would be in the best interest of print media if Murdoch died tomorrow.
I loath Murdoch but newspapers NEVER should have given-away their content.
I know that conservatives are CELEBRATING the death of newspapers but not me.
The loss of newspapers means the loss of an informed electorate.
(which, of course, is why the conservatives are celebrating.)
But there simply MUST be a micro-payment system.
>> Troublemaker said
>> Yeah, laugh it up Dvorak and cronies.
You have HORRIBLE reading comprehension if you think we send “dittos” to Dvorak the way the Right Wingers do to Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage.
Maybe if the newspapers would do their jobs…and deliver a quality product, instead of a lot of AP crap, and watered down, boring local, and never anything remotely bordering on investigative…I’d pay. But right now, nah. Murdoch is the worst of the worst when it comes to crap news.
Fine let ALL the American publications fail. I’ll read my Internet news from the world news. I am so sick of having whats on American Idol or Dancing with the Stars pushed as “news”, and I could give a fat rats ass what any of our “celebs” are doing.
I agree. You should have to pay to view the mind porn he sells.
About time. I don’t understand why newspapers started putting everything up for free. ‘Hey Chris, there’s this great restaurant, gives us a steak dinner for $50, or we can eat it at home for free. Want to go out?’
What did they expect to happen to their subscriptions?
As for actually fixing things, Mark Cuban’s idea of joining up with cable companies and ISPs and collecting money from all subscribers sounds good.
@MikeN
If the newspaper wanted to survive, they could have.
Most of the newspaper don’t want to survive.
Case in point, I get tons of those free and unwanted advertising “newspapers” regularly every week.
I also get a small and unwanted municipality newspapers every week (about 10 pages).
Newspaper generate a lot of revenue from advertising.
What the newspaper didn’t want to do was think hard, experiment and adapt. Maybe deliver the newspaper to cost-effective areas for free to bulk up circulation — an important factor for advertising prices — and maybe not serve hard to get to or cost-ineffective areas.
But a TRUE weakness of capitalism is that only the owner has freedom and everyone else it is just their job.
So if the owner is old, crusty, isolated and stupid then the newspaper is screwed.
Because corporate drones are well taught that they are the servant class and expressing thought and ideas is frowned upon and can get you fired.
^^ Wow, bad proofreading. Please ignore the countless grammatical errors.
I tried to remember how the dollar was spent and it seemed to be like this. I am not relying on accurate records or data. Your milage may vary.
Each month in the 70′s we spent: $25
44% for telephone
32% for movie theater
24% for newspaper
0 for television
n/a for internet
Each month in the 80′s we spent: $40
32% for telephone
25% for movie theater
18% for newspaper
25% for cable television
n/a for internet
Each month in the 90′s we spent: $110
18% for telephone
11% for movie theater
7% for newspaper
55% for cable television
9% for internet
Each month in the new millennium we spend: $340
43% for telephone (including mobile)
4% for movie theater
0 for newspaper
35% for cable television
18% for internet
Can you blame the newspaper industry for wanting a slice of the pie?
A sad, detached, old man.
If the Daily Planet goes belly up, where will Clark and Lois work?
Here’s the thing about Rupert Murdoch, media monopolist. Back when I had cable tv, we had an online guide website, that covered two weeks of programming. As well as local cable’s own guide channel, which showed sever hour’s programming in advance. Then Rupert Murdoch came along and bought that out. Replaced it with his Tv Guide website and channel. And the website then didn’t
show more than a few day programming in advance. Maybe that’s changed since then. But his reason for doing it, was the free (to anyone, not just cable subscribers) website was competing with his expensive Tv Guide. Which only covers a week, at best. Though they know two weeks in advance what’s scheduled. Cause it takes them a week to edit, print and distribute the thing. But an online site like Zap2It.com, hasn’t got that overhead to slow it down. And they don’t use it to sell tobacco products either.
But when Rupert Murdoch buy out something, it’s to preserve his crappier product, by killing its competition. If Zap2It was done by anyone smaller than Tribune Media, he’d probably would have killed that too by now. And since Tv Guide turned into a costly photo op rag, I can’t see why anyone would want it.
# 70 meetsy said, “Maybe if the newspapers would do their jobs…and deliver a quality product, instead of a lot of AP crap, and watered down, boring local, and never anything remotely bordering on investigative…”
This is why they are going away.