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.”
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.