Rupert Murdock, whose News Corp, owns everything from Fox Television, to the Wall Street Journal, to the New York Post and media outlets all around the world, took a look at his financial statements for his fiscal year ending in June and came to a business decision:
You’re going to start paying for his content.
Realizing that ad revenues may never recover to previous levels, Murdoch declared that the era of a free online news was over.
“Quality journalism is not cheap,” said Murdoch.
“The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels, but it has not made content free”
“We intend to charge for all our news websites.”
News Corporation reported a a $3.4 Billion dollar loss for the financial year ending in June.
Currently only the Wall Street Journal charges a fee for online access.
Murdoch said he was “willing to take the risk of leading the industry towards a pay-per-view model”.
“I believe that if we’re successful, we’ll be followed fast by other media.”
“We’ll be asserting our copyright at every point.”
Wow
Who is going to pay for Fox News content when CNN is free?
Mr. Murdock is saying if Fox starts charging for their content then CNN and others will follow.
But what if CNN doesn’t follow?
What if ABCnews.com doesn’t follow?
What if news remains free on thousands of sites on the net?
What if Murdock leads this revolution and no one follows?
Maybe Mr. Murdock should have listened to his own advice he offered just a month ago when he said
“The economy is going to take years and years to recover”, and just accept revenues are going to be down until the economy recovers.
Or Murdock maybe proven right and people will start paying for content.
But Murdock will not be leading the charge.
Because just this month, ESPN Magazine (ESPN is owned by Disney which also owns ABC) started charging for access to its site.
So actually ESPN is leading the charge.
The question is how successful the “pay for access” plan will be.
BusinessWeek.com thinks people will pay up for ESPN Mag access.
We know people do pay for access to the Wall Street Journal online, and ESPN is the definitive sports brand, but will people pay for to access to the NY Post?
I think that is an entirely different matter.
Nope… I read the NY Post online in the morning to get local news, but I will get my news elsewhere if they start charging.
BTW, The NY Post over estimated the value the newspaper brings to its readers once before:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/business/media/10paper.html
I regularly use CNN.com and FowNews.com (I find that it is a good balance=)) but if FoxNews.com go pay then I will definitely go somewhere else.
I recognize their right to charge, I will simply choose not to pay it.
If they don’t charge for television then what makes them decide they have to for the internet?
Troy
That is FoxNews.com=)
I think its the right move. Realistically, what is the alternative? Close up shop?
I can’t believe all the “premium media outlets” have been giving their content away for free. My guess the others will follow, within days.
What has always shocked me the most is that everyone (including the “non-premium media outlets” gives all their content to Google for free. How much longer will this make sense for, or when will google start to have to pay us to index our sites? Just another crazy thought I suppose, or is it? Google gets access to our content for free then becomes a $100 Billion (yep with a B) dollar company? Where is our kick back? I’ve always thought it a little ironic that google actually doesn’t have any of its own content (well I suppose the video content counts)
JP
Sounds like your signing up to be the first paying member of TheDomains.com.
How much should I charge a month?
@MHB
I’d pay a small monthly fee. I find your blog a worthwhile and valuable resource for my business. I certainly benfit from it, but of course everyone would have to pay, not just me 🙂
Not that I don’t mind getting it for free either, but you’re worth it. Blogs & other media outlets could have a 2 tierd model for charging (just an idea). Monthly subscription, or pay per view (customer chooses). On pay per view you could just show the headline + a the first N characters of the post, and then charge for the rest of the post.
Keep up the good work. We’d be in the dark about so many issues without your help, and so many other industry bloggers. Hopefully you do alright selling ads at least for now to make it worth your time.
For how much to charge a month for a subscription, I’d look at how many religious readers you have and do some math and figure out how much you want to make based on how much you think everyone would be willing to pay. It probably couldn’t be more than $10 a month max to start. You could always do a discount for annual subscribers.
I’ll stop pissing everybody else off now.
Adios, El Kabong.
Charge your advertisers. Never your readers. He’s not too old or rich to learn.
I think it makes sense to charge both. If your only revenue comes from advertisers who will you be ultimately loyal to in the end? Look what happened to television and old media. Imagine your online advertisers start to care about what you talk about on your site? This could extend way pass just profanity. This is far away from the domain industry but what if Sedo says they are going to take away their big ad spend on your site if you promote any other parking company. Again, this is a long term problem.
Mainstream news are totally worthless anyway, waste of time.
People will find relevant news elsewhere. Advertisers should pay; always. Good content will attract eyeballs and advertisers will be happy to pay a site ad dollars based on those eyeballs. Websites can actually prove traffic, newspapers? not really. We might have to pay a bit more for kindling for starting fires in our fireplaces or woodstoves though. 🙂 bye bye Mr. M.
Best.
The bottom line, the internet has shown that you can compete with the paid services and make money, the guy from plentyoffish.com proved that. His whole goal was to go after something that everyone charged for and do it for free. In the last article done on him in INC magazine he talked about how he works one hour a day and makes $5million a year.
As people like Ron Jackson have pointed out the quality of journalism has gone way down, we see that in the non fact checking domain articles that are done by the big media companies.
Do I like Michael ? Yeah ? Would I ever pay to read any domain blog ? Never, why no disrespect for the most part you can get the same news elsewhere except for the authors opinion. Perfect example I already read this story before Michael posted it, and there was talk about this two weeks ago at a big media conference where Barry Diller said the same thing and we talked about it on Namepros.
With Facebook,Twitter, and all the other social media out there along with highly competent blogs that will never charge, it seems to me Mr.Murdoch feels like he has to try something. He will try and because a few will pay they will call it a success, at least when they talk to their shareholders, but most will know this is not going to work for too many. People don’t want to pay for music where at least they think the artists have talent, and they are going to pay for a profession where most people feel there is no talent ? I do not think so but that’s just my opinion.
Wow Murdoch must be really concerned with his investments not doing nearly as well as expected. With people fleeting from MySpace I guess this is just a way to make up for it.
What business model profits by giving away the product? For twenty years I’ve paid to have the paper delivered to my house. I also scour the web for news using Google and other search engines for free. Now we see major instiutions like the Seattle PI going under because they’ve been giving away their content. This makes no sense at all. If these news organizations thought that website advertising would save them they are finding out that very few of us bother to look at let alone click on those ads. You know it is a failing business model when you hear stories of the local TV station managers sitting and clicking through their website to generate “hits”. Can I count on my local paper to give me all the news I want for a fee? Maybe, but I think that there will be news for a fee in the future
Dewey
Plenty of media outlets make money giving their product away, Television and radio, to just name 2.
Some people pay for HBO because they have special content but free TV networks have a far greater audience and profit margin
I have been looking at the online news business model for a while. Everyone knows its broken but why and how is just as important to constructing ways to fix it and start making money again.
I am located in Houston and recently read the houston chronicle (not online) and 90% or more of the stories in the paper were articles from AP and Reuters. The newspapers have cut real journalism out for the most part because that costs real money.
However, why should i pay for AP news via the houston chronicle when i can get it online for free from 100’s of outlets. If those outlets were charged based on the eyeball, it would level the playing field and make all news “cost the same” regardless of the format you read or see it.
This way, local newspapers have a “chance” to survive in print or online. However, the real long term loser will be AP and Reuters 10 years from now because they will only have a small number of paying subscribers for their news and the trend will repeat itself because they can not afford their journalists and the quality and quantity of reports will go down further.
Content is King and if Murdoch thinks his brands are stong enough to support charging for a fee, without a HUGE quality uptick of real journalism, He is a fool! The only thing that seperates his properties from the 100’s of others is the brand. In the day of the internet, the “brand” means little when it is so easy to find the same just as easy for less.
There might be 10 newspapers in America that delivers real value and could get away with charging a fee.
Think of the unique characteristics of ESPN Magazine and WSJ…
What other Newspaper / Magazine properties have similiar qualities?
Those are the ones i would attempt to monetize in PPV. All the rest are dead!
Excellent post Steven
Great post MHB:
Will someone please explain to me how the internet is “free” if I’m paying a $50 monthly broadband bill and the ISPs are making a killing? They love it when people post about “free content” on the web and they go under the radar aren’t even mentioned.
Exhibit A: ESPN.com gets paid nothing from Comcast, but ESPN TV gets paid a subsidy from Comcast. That’s where the money is.
http://briancarr.net/?p=20
Cheers, bcarr