It would seem that Rupert Murdoch feels the time has come for people to stop freeloading on the Web.
Perhaps due to an astronomical drop in News Corp profits ($216 million last year down to $7 million this year in year-over-year reports), founder Rupert Murdoch announced via a conference call the Guardian was on, that within the next 12-months he expects to be charging for access to his corporations news websites.
It seems that his thinking is based on one lone example of success, that being of the Wall Street Journal website.
That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal’s experience.
What he seems to be forgetting is that the New York Times used to charge access for their website, but they are now an open site with ad-support. While the Wall Street Journal is enjoying success, it is also highly specialized news source, and not a generalized newspaper site like those of Mr. Murdoch. Unless he can find some miraculous way to get every current free news source to charge for access at the exact same time he starts charging for his, he will find himself a very lonely individual with a huge lack of subscribers.
While what he says makes some sense, what he is missing is that people will simply turn to the numerous free resources that will still remain online before they pay for that exact same information. While there is no doubt that print newspapers are suffering, going to subscription based online sites is not the answer. All it will do is drive people away from your site, and with reduced visitors, the sites will look less appealing to advertisers. It is an almost guaranteed lose-lose situation at this point.
There is no doubt that Rupert Murdoch is a smart man, just look at the media empire he’s built, but it is obvious that he is another in a long line of people who doesn’t get the inner workings of how the Internet works. The genie was let out of the bottle a long time ago, and subscriptions are a thing of the past, so best of luck to him on trying to shove it back in to its bottle.
Jolene
May 9th, 2009 at 11:13 am #
I agree. Specialized sources of information can charge, but charging for stuff that we can get free from other sources won't work.
Mitch
May 9th, 2009 at 11:12 pm #
Sean,
I think by you saying that there's "a long line of people who [don’t] get the inner workings of how the Internet works," you've shown us that you understand the problem even less than you imagine Murdoch does. It's not a technical obstacle, it's psychological. I don't know to dissect a problem like people not wanting to pay for something they previously always have, but I know you don't start by dumping it on the complexity of the enabling technology.
And on another note, if you do decide to ponder the problem I have pointed out, you should also take a bit of time to sit down and figure out a better way to write "inner workings of how something works" because it's a very confusing, empty statement.
- Mitch