Dangerous Incorporated
Guests
Bottled water drinkers are the only people I know that will happily – willingly – pay for something they know they can get free.
So what makes Rupert Murdoch think he can get away with making people pay to read newspapers online?
“People are used to reading everything on the net for free, and that’s going to have to change”, he said last week.
Has losing $4.5 billion last year amid the GFC addled the old boy’s brain?
“Nobody is making money with free content on the web except search [engines]”, he grumbled at an event in Washington DC.
Well he might be bitter, but he’s right, of course.
Most publishers are hoping that revenues from online ads will offset the vapourising of paper ads – but Murdoch has warned that online revenues will not cover costs.
US print ad revenues slumped 17 percent to their lowest level in 14 years last year, and even online ads fell for the first time in five years, according to the American Newspaper Association. Here in Australia, we fared better – with ad spend down just 0.6 percent last year.
But that won’t last. Most of last year’s little fall in ads was in job classifieds, which - according to ANZ’s report yesterday - have plunged a massive 44.6 percent since this time last year - the biggest annual decrease on record.
Certainly businesses across the board have been cutting back. Fairfax Media group kicked off the cost-cutting in the Aussie media industry last year, while in the US the New York Times has shed staff and slashed pay packets - and the owner of the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune has filed for bankruptcy. Today, the Boston Globe became the latest great masthead set to sink under a tidal wave of debt.
In the UK, journalists at the Financial Times are being taught online skills (about time), and The Guardian’s April Fools’ joke – that it was giving up printing altogether and publishing solely on Twitter – was taken seriously by a worrying number of people.
Murdoch – who bought the Wall Street Journal in 2007 - has naturally picked on WSJ’s biggest rival, the NY Times, saying it still can’t cover its costs despite having one of the most popular websites in the US. The NY Times, which is free to read online, did try and introduce selective pay-to-view articles, but it didn’t work. Readers jumped ship.
Incidentally, the WSJ is one of the few papers that still charges its readers online. It costs $144 for an annual subscription - but Murdoch’s admitted that the revenue from website is “not a gold a mine”.
The likes of Murdoch's WSJ, Fairfax's Financial Review and Pearson's Financial Times get away with charging because they service niche areas of affluent readers. A general news audience however, is unlikely to pay for standard news reports they can get from any number of online providers.
Which is perhaps why none of Murdoch’s other titles charge fees – the New York Post, The Times and The Sun in the UK, Sydney’s own Daily Telegraph and The Australian - all free. All Fairfax's titles - bar the Fin Review - are free too, as is ninemsn.
If Murdoch starts charging, there’ll be plenty of other places to go for the news. I think I’ll stick to using Google as my newsstand.
http://money.ninemsn.com.au/blog.aspx?blogentryid=373568&showcomments=true
Would you pay to read newspapers online?
So what makes Rupert Murdoch think he can get away with making people pay to read newspapers online?
“People are used to reading everything on the net for free, and that’s going to have to change”, he said last week.
Has losing $4.5 billion last year amid the GFC addled the old boy’s brain?
“Nobody is making money with free content on the web except search [engines]”, he grumbled at an event in Washington DC.
Well he might be bitter, but he’s right, of course.
Most publishers are hoping that revenues from online ads will offset the vapourising of paper ads – but Murdoch has warned that online revenues will not cover costs.
US print ad revenues slumped 17 percent to their lowest level in 14 years last year, and even online ads fell for the first time in five years, according to the American Newspaper Association. Here in Australia, we fared better – with ad spend down just 0.6 percent last year.
But that won’t last. Most of last year’s little fall in ads was in job classifieds, which - according to ANZ’s report yesterday - have plunged a massive 44.6 percent since this time last year - the biggest annual decrease on record.
Certainly businesses across the board have been cutting back. Fairfax Media group kicked off the cost-cutting in the Aussie media industry last year, while in the US the New York Times has shed staff and slashed pay packets - and the owner of the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune has filed for bankruptcy. Today, the Boston Globe became the latest great masthead set to sink under a tidal wave of debt.
In the UK, journalists at the Financial Times are being taught online skills (about time), and The Guardian’s April Fools’ joke – that it was giving up printing altogether and publishing solely on Twitter – was taken seriously by a worrying number of people.
Murdoch – who bought the Wall Street Journal in 2007 - has naturally picked on WSJ’s biggest rival, the NY Times, saying it still can’t cover its costs despite having one of the most popular websites in the US. The NY Times, which is free to read online, did try and introduce selective pay-to-view articles, but it didn’t work. Readers jumped ship.
Incidentally, the WSJ is one of the few papers that still charges its readers online. It costs $144 for an annual subscription - but Murdoch’s admitted that the revenue from website is “not a gold a mine”.
The likes of Murdoch's WSJ, Fairfax's Financial Review and Pearson's Financial Times get away with charging because they service niche areas of affluent readers. A general news audience however, is unlikely to pay for standard news reports they can get from any number of online providers.
Which is perhaps why none of Murdoch’s other titles charge fees – the New York Post, The Times and The Sun in the UK, Sydney’s own Daily Telegraph and The Australian - all free. All Fairfax's titles - bar the Fin Review - are free too, as is ninemsn.
If Murdoch starts charging, there’ll be plenty of other places to go for the news. I think I’ll stick to using Google as my newsstand.
http://money.ninemsn.com.au/blog.aspx?blogentryid=373568&showcomments=true
Would you pay to read newspapers online?
