Here’s the $64,000 question:
Media companies have had a hard time getting consumers to pay for content online, but Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is attempting to leverage its worldwide news-gathering operation to get them to do just that.
In one of the most ambitious online undertakings by a media outfit, News Corp. has assembled a team of executives to devise a system to charge for content on the Web.
For Murdoch, the move is also a clear break from the notion that content, particularly news content, can be offered online for free and monetized solely through advertising.
The team is said to be looking at creating a user-friendly device akin to Amazon’s Kindle to deliver content from such News Corp. newspapers as The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London and The New York Post, as well as content from the company’s television and movie units.
Am I missing something here, or does it look like only Conservatives will have to be paying for their news? FOX, WSJ, and the NY POST? Why not the Washington Times, too, so we’ll get NOTHING without paying?
SURE! Keep US as uninformed as the Left! They have plenty of media with no truth, we’ll have plenty of media that’s going to cost us so WE won’t get the truth, either.
OH, that’s JUST WONDERFUL (not)
I’ll not be paying, myself. And I suspect there’ll be any number of ways to still acquire information for free. This is a push that, I believe, will be revealed to be not only costly for those failing organizations but will explode back in their faces.
BZ
Z is absolutely right and so are you! No, BZ, I won’t be paying.
Since the explosion in popularity of “online presence” for the newspapers, said newspapers have pushed the idea of “get more information on this story on line at” and then listing their web site. I have questioned the business sense of giving away for free what people are willing to subscribe for; with the increase in the number of on-line readers and (shock!) the decrease of subscribers, the newspapers are tanking hard.
The online presence has always been free of charge (unless you count the giving of your information to register a “charge”) and therefore the content has been free. The advertising, while irritating, is not as intrusive as television advertising – on TV, you have to sit through the commercial unless you recorded the program, on line you can simply skip the ad and continue reading the FREE content.
It is human nature to enjoy the free stuff that comes along, since everything has a price. It is also human nature that when the free lunch is over you move on to the next free lunch. If the on line version of the papers (and the television stations) start to charge for what was previously free, then people are going to move on. If I want to pay for a news feed, I will subscribe directly to AP, UPI, or another outlet, and read the articles before the Liberal Left Leaning Obamabots rewrite them. Otherwise, no, I will not pay for news. Newspaper, yes, but not raw news.
The Arizona Republic doesn’t understand this, nor does it’s parent company, Gannett.
I won’t pay for it. I will catch the news elsewhere like on Gateway Pundit and other news sources online, and on Fox on t.v.
Nope
So far, doesn’t look good for Mr Murdoch’s idea. . .
BZ
Unless Murdock can conner the market on news, I can’t see this going anywhere.
BZ, why should I pay for what I can have for free. Once while on an extended stay in Mexico, during the time PRI was the ruling party. The government objected to an article in one of Mexico’s leading magazines. The government solution was to ban the sale of that publication. I found out about this quite by accident–as I was checking out at the local Super Mart. they were giving away free copies of a magazine (the one in question) I inquired and was told the story if they couldn’t sell them they would just give them away for nothing. Sure many more people read the article than had the government stayed out of the issue. Yea, I’ll take free over pay any day, but with the realization that nothing is really free.
Ron: that’s part of the issue; he WILL try to corral as much of the news content as he can by purchasing the website venue or portions of as much mass media as possible. I’ll wager that IS his plan. Then he can charge ANY price he wishes.
BZ