Word: murdoch
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...industry analyst for Outsell. "He could be trying to be the pied piper." The New York Times, which in the past has experimented with charging for online content, is expected to make an announcement about a new fee model at the end of summer. In the days that followed Murdoch's announcement, the Financial Times, which charges for some content, and the Boston Globe dropped hints that they were looking into different payment schemes. Time Inc. has raised the possibility of charging for content. Even Mort Zuckerman, who owns Murdoch's New York City rival tabloid the Daily News, joined...
...Murdoch's conundrum remains that his advertising-driven properties - news and broadcast TV - are in the dunny, as the Australian media baron might say, while the pay-for-content properties - movies and cable - are holding steady or growing. (His Internet assets, including MySpace, lost a third of their value. But to be fair, nobody has figured out how to make money from social networking yet.) So why not, he figures, get paid for all the content...
Internet experts say that almost everybody who has ever tried charging for content has failed. Murdoch is out of touch, they suggest. Michael Wolff, whose book on Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News, came out in December, says he was shocked to learn that Murdoch didn't have an e-mail address, could barely use his cell phone and had not been on the Internet unaided. "Technology," writes Wolff, "has always been regarded as one of those things, like fancy hotels, or long-form writing, that are not part of [News Corp.'s] culture...
...Still, Murdoch has shown himself more than willing to lose staggering amounts of money and engage in litigation in order to see his vision through or lay siege to his competitors. Sometimes his aggressive moves pay off (as in British pay cable operator BskyB) and sometimes they don't (as in TV Guide). Plus, with his cable operations showing robust growth, he has a cushion that few of his newspaper competitors possess...
...Murdoch can somehow figure out how to make money while other news companies wither in advertising-only models, he could have a little monopoly. "Murdoch has always been a huge gambler, but a calculated gambler," says Roy Greenslade, who worked for Murdoch for several years in Britain and is now a media columnist. "And he's always had a desire for a monopoly." Greenslade, for the record, thinks Murdoch is barking up the wrong tree...