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26 Mar 2010
News Corp has announced plans to introduce pay-walls for The Times and The Sunday Times web sites in an effort to curb the financial losses which News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch has blamed on search sites such as Google.
The new system will be introduced in June, and will charge £1 a day or £2 a week for access to the site's content, according to a report in The Times. Pricing for international visitors has been set at $2/€1.5 (£1.35) a day or $4/€3 (£2.70) a week.
The move follows a long-running spat in which Murdoch has accused companies like Google, Microsoft and Ask of "stealing" content by letting users find and read stories for free through search engines.
Murdoch has also stated that search companies should pay for the privilege of featuring his sites' content in search listings, and is rumoured to be considering legal action against Google.
The media mogul has also threatened to remove links from Google when his company brings in the pay-walls later this year.
Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News Corp, told The Times that the new system will help the site to generate a new audience, and confirmed that The Sun and The News of the World will follow suit.
"At a defining moment for journalism, this is a crucial step towards making the business of news an economically exciting proposition. We are proud of our journalism and unashamed to say that we believe it has value," she said.
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Interesting Move
The decision by News International to charge for access to their websites is a really interesting move. Meltwater applauds the innovation of new business models for online content. Everybody benefits from a thriving and successful global publishing sector; any move that can mitigate the financial challenges in the media sector is a positive. Many publications ? such as the Wall Street Journal for example ? have already gone down this route and others are considering the same. The ongoing challenge for publishers, in the aftermath of installing pay walls, will be to ensure their customers are aware of the valuable and compelling content being created by their journalists. This could very easily be content that readers would be more than happy to pay for, but which they might not even know exists. Getting the balance right between the availability of free content and access to paid-for content will be crucial. As a truly global media monitoring company, Meltwater believes we can play a valuable role in this regard. We are already creating global awareness of restricted content behind login pages and pay walls for numerous media outlets such as the Financial Times. We promote and market their restricted content to a global audience of potential paying readers and thereby drive traffic and revenue for our partnering publishers. Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater (http://meltwater.com/en/who-we-are)
Posted by: Jorn Lyseggen 28 Mar 2010
A fool and his money are soon parted
Could be Murdoch or could be you, if he succeeds. When you pay for content on the internet it usually means you give up your real life identity. That combined with what you think (i.e. read) is an extremely valuable commodity. It is also information that can be used against you should it come to that. It infringes on your right to privacy and to hold your own thoughts. It is why authorities shouldn't know what you check out of the library. The internet offers tremendous cost savings over print. Murdoch is an extremely greedy man and too stupid to know how to successfully associate content with advertisement or advertisement with content. Or to successfully make the argument that ads should be paid for even if they aren't clicked on. The identity driven information Murdoch could glean from you is even greater than anything Google ever imagined.
Posted by: rod 27 Mar 2010
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Could be Murdoch or could be you, if he succeeds. When you pay for content on the internet it usually means you give up your real life identity. That combined with what you think (i.e. read) is an extremely valuable commodity. It is also information that can be used against you should it come to that. It infringes on your right to privacy and to hold your own thoughts. It is why authorities shouldn't know what you check out of the library. The internet offers tremendous cost savings over print. Murdoch is an extremely greedy man and too stupid to know how to successfully associate content with advertisement or advertisement with content. Or to successfully make the argument that ads should be paid for even if they aren't clicked on. The identity driven information Murdoch could glean from you is even greater than anything Google ever imagined.
Posted by: rod 27 Mar 2010
Pay-wall News Access May Backfire on Ads Revenues
As most revenues in the media come from advertisements it is logical to say that restricting access will only hit ads revenue streams so As I said before ?Cut Your Nose Off to Spite Your Face? please do. So prepare to have your investors ads money disappear Murdoch, for who will advertise in a Newspaper when it has a very limited audience? Last time Murdoch was moaning about Google saying they were pinching his News, yet if Google took News Corp out of its register, News Corp might fail to exist online. Do us all a Big ,Big favor Murdoch and keep your so-called News we don?t want it or need it. Russian entrepreneurs are moving into UK based main stream media, so maybe goodbye Murdoch eventually? It is British mismanagement that causes most of the losses in British Business together with UK Gov and its total obsession with increased Taxation coupled with vast amounts of ever increasing hideous 'Red Tape Laws' created mainly to increase revenue streams yet again. It is noteworthy that since the The Evening Standard was bought by a Russian business man they can now afford to give the paper away FREE in the Streets of London, As I said before ?Cut Your Nose Off to Spite Your Face? please do. Signed Carl Barron Chairman of agpcuk
Posted by: Carl Barron 26 Mar 2010