Has the Great Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch Made a Mistake?
One of the world’s wealthiest individuals, media mogul, owner of numerous media outlets (20th Century Fox, Fox Television Stations, Fox Television Stations, MySpace, The Sun, The Times, New York Post…) Rupert Murdoch shocked the world when he declared war on Google, i.e. free searching and reading of news and articles. Murdoch’s corporation News Corp. decided to introduce charging for “The Times” online content and that of its Sunday edition, the Sunday Times at a pound for 24-hour access, that is, two pounds for weekly viewing. Some held out hope that the 79-year-old media expert’s move would entail a much-needed life-saving solution for the survival of print editions, whose circulation suffered a rapid decline in the recession, while others touted him a visionary heralding a new media era; and then there are those who mocked and dismissed his project altogether, deeming it completely off base and futile…
Fast-forward five months later and the first results and first reactions were in, at long last: advertisers completely disappointed with the number of subscribers massively leaving online editions, economic analysts neither too thrilled nor optimistic, the whole project has yet to take hold with international readers from whom much was expected of…, while Murdoch is still holding on tight to his plans despite the considerably lacking numbers. News Corp. finally went public with concrete figures. They announced that their digital system recorded 105.000 transactions from July to October (which doesn’t necessarily mean 105.000 different users, since the same users paid for various services several times), of which approximately 50.000 people used the one-month trial option of paying a pound never to return to the online edition again. Out of six million original print edition subscribers worldwide only a 100.000 of them showed interest in having online access which means a 97% decline in online edition reading.
Although we’d like for all online content to stay free of charge forever, it’s a fact that charging quality texts is bound to take hold as a legitimate business model at some point, one that not exactly everyone will be able to realize. There aren’t many media outlets that possess either “The Times’” reputation and tradition, or The Economists quality… but despite those facts it seems that a concept interesting enough to conquer Google News and its near 12.000 varied and completely free news sources has yet to be found.
*Photographs courtesy of
http://blogs.villagevoice.com
http://www.innovationsinnewspapers.com
