| Aug 7, 2009 @ 1:52 PM |
the future of the news.......is in the news...
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Gallows_Humor
Posts: 14,751
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 .....
http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/06/mort-zuckerman-daily-news-business-media-mort.html?partner=whiteglove_googleMortimer Zuckerman's $200 Million Gamble .....The recession has triggered a lot of panic-driven behavior. Advertisers have moved billions out of print media. Have they over-reacted? I don't think so. Advertisers are reacting to the drop in consumer spending. There's a lot of apprehension about what the rising unemployment rate will do to consumer spending down the road. But what's good for an individual company is not always good for the overall economy. What kind of shape will newspapers be in when the recession ends, and what else can they do? A lot of cities are going to exist without newspapers. There is something that can be done, and the federal government ought to do it: allow sports betting on newspaper Web sites. That would save every newspaper in America. The New York Times.com could do it. Plenty of British papers do this; for them it's a crucial part of their net revenue stream. I know a major newspaper in London that makes $15 million a year from sports betting alone. What would it take for that to happen in the U.S.? It would take congressional legislation and the willingness on the part of the government to confront gambling and casino interests that have blocked this. Newspaper owners have never gotten together to lobby for this because they have always been quite profitable. Those days are behind us. Now that the price of newspapers have come down, are you considering acquisitions? I'm going to focus on the new presses I'm buying. The New York Times has raised newsstand and delivery prices. Is this something you're considering too? I really haven't thought about it. It's true that there has traditionally been a price relationship between the Times and the Daily News, with the News costing about 50% of the Times. With what the Times charges now, the Daily News is more like 25% of that. But it's not something I'm considering. The recession is triggering a flood of paywalls being constructed by newspapers and other media organizations, including News Corp. ( NWS - news - people ) Does this strategy make sense? Oh, its a great idea. I'll be the second or third to do it. Not the first.
and..
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/08/murdoch-to-start-charge-for-online-news-content.htmlMurdoch to charge for online news content News Corp, which owns the London Times and Sun newspapers in Britain and the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal in the U.S., among many other papers, will soon begin charging for news content online, the BBC reports. “We intend to charge for all our news websites," said chief executive Rupert Murdoch. "I believe that if we are successful, we will be followed by other media”. To keep readers from simply shifting to free news websites, Murdoch said News Corp would simply make its content "better and differentiate it from other people," the BBC reports. Murdoch said he was "satisfied" that the company could produce "significant revenues from the sale of digital delivery of newspaper content." "Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting," he said, the BBC reports.
in this age of the internet....shouldn't the news be free 
and if one can ( in the future..) legally gamble off a news site...
why not allow casino gambling off reservation ??
,,Santa Catalina Island ( or better still one of the other channel Islands..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Islands_of_California .)would be a good place for it in California... 
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| Aug 7, 2009 @ 2:36 PM |
the future of the news.......is in the news... |
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MotownManiax
Posts: 9,737
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I guess if "every" site goes pay we'd have no choice, but until then I will NOT pay just to read news on the net. I have SBC-Yahoo Internet as my connection portal, so in a sense already paying for Yahoo site content. If Yahoo wants to charge an "additional" fee just to go to their sites I'd be mighty ticked.
 Mo
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| Aug 7, 2009 @ 3:31 PM |
the future of the news.......is in the news...
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Say_Yes
Posts: 2,256
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While I think it is a mistake for them to do this, it may well work, due to their demographics. Fox & the Murdock owned newspapers are the only source of news, from the conservative point of view. As they have a virtual monopoly on this market, they have the option to monetize that monopoly.
If you are liberal, then you have a multitide of options, from which to obtain news, with a liberal bent. NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, PBS, NY Times, Washington Post, USA Today..... all present pretty much the same (liberal) point of view, in their news & commentary. Given the competition in that market segment, there is no reason to pay to view their info. After all, if CNN charges to access their site, you can get the same view point for free from NBC, CBS, etc.
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| Aug 7, 2009 @ 3:50 PM |
the future of the news.......is in the news... |
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MotownManiax
Posts: 9,737
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What I can see happening is once a big conglomerate like Murdoch goes pay the others will eventually follow suit. They'll figure why give out something for free when the competition's generating bucks?
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| Aug 7, 2009 @ 4:01 PM |
the future of the news.......is in the news...
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Nightowl001
Posts: 8,214
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I've got a slightly different take on it, SY.
Bill Maher did an excellent opinion piece on air, on Real Time, about this very kind of issue. While he wasn't specifically referring to news, he did point out that at one point, all the major networks carried news, but recognized those hours as "loss leaders." Television and radio "news" was really not as tainted by the profit motive as the entertainment sector. When CNN was first founded, it was relatively neutral. They made their money because any time of day, you could turn on the news, and their advertisers went for that demographic who wanted that. The origins of The Weather Channel were much the same. They appealed to the people who just wanted the bare information....short, concise and NOW.
The world of information exchange has changed a LOT in the last 20 years. Newspapers have become hopelessly outdated, not only because of the lack of immediacy they offer, but because they weren't part of a package every cable subscriber was already getting. Why pay for information you heard yesterday evening for "free"?
I think Murdoch has overestimated the market who is going to pay for news, because at the base of it, news is just news. Without the spin. The facts aren't going to be ""better and" differentiated "from other people." He is going to have to sell analysis and commentary that they can already find for free in blogland. In other words, all he will be selling is "star commentary," from whatever stars are on his payroll. And I think he has overestimated what people are listening to for "free" that he thinks they will pay for. I don't think 1/100th of the people who listen to Rush or Beck or Hannity will pay for the privilege.
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| Aug 7, 2009 @ 6:39 PM |
the future of the news.......is in the news... |
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Say_Yes
Posts: 2,256
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I think Murdoch has overestimated the market who is going to pay for news, because at the base of it, news is just news. Without the spin. The facts aren't going to be ""better and" differentiated "from other people." He is going to have to sell analysis and commentary that they can already find for free in blogland. In other words, all he will be selling is "star commentary," from whatever stars are on his payroll. And I think he has overestimated what people are listening to for "free" that he thinks they will pay for. I don't think 1/100th of the people who listen to Rush or Beck or Hannity will pay for the privilege.
To a large degree, I agree with you. The news is the news, though all reporting of the news is spun to some degree, by the way in which the reports are worded. Largely, what he has to sell is analysis and the personalities that he has employed.
The thing is, Murdock doesn't need to capture a 1% share, to make money on his subscription service. The economics of it comes down to, whether he can generate more revenue from just ad sales on a free site, than he can from a much smaller number of viewers, who pay to view his sites, plus the ad revenue it generates. The one jewel that he does have, which people may pay for is the Wall Street Journal. My guess is that for most of his media empire, he won't be able to make up for the loss in ad revenue, from the number of people who will pay. The Journal may be an exception to that, but I expect it will be the only exception.
The thing is, if he has any degree of success, then others will follow. Newspapers are no longer relevant & TV news, is rapidly losing relevance, due to lags in the new cycles. People want news on demand. More and more, the venue of choice for news, is the web. Years ago, it was newspapers, then radio, then TV. We pay for cable TV, many of us pay for satellite radio & it won't surprise me, if many also choose to pay for internet based news.
BTW, he is far from the first to do online pay per view for media. For example, MLB has a subscription service & for a small fee, you can watch most MLB baseball games live on the web. If you don't pay, then not only can you not watch those games on the web, you can't listen to them either.
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| Aug 7, 2009 @ 7:06 PM |
the future of the news.......is in the news...
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Nightowl001
Posts: 8,214
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BTW, he is far from the first to do online pay per view for media. For example, MLB has a subscription service & for a small fee, you can watch most MLB baseball games live on the web. If you don't pay, then not only can you not watch those games on the web, you can't listen to them either. I'm not arguing that it hasn't been successful to a very limited degree to date already, SY. But I still think that, as in the MLB example, you can't sell "news" (i.e., the scores), all you can sell is the entertainment (by which I mean insufficient numbers of people would be willing to pay for the raw data).
The WSJ isn't going to have a lock on the NYSE or NASDAQ reports of what stocks went up and what went down, and I think the people who are willing to pay for analysis will find themselves being wooed by every brokerage house in the world offering similar analyses, in competition with the WSJ for those dollars.
I just think the only way to get people to pay for the news is to convince them they are getting "better" news for their premium dollars than they can get somewhere else for free. And, aside from a certain faddish, cliquish sense that may develop over it, I just don't see it happening in the kinds of numbers that would support it long term.
Usually I think Murdoch is a pretty smart s.o.b. (emphasis on s.o.b.), but this time I just believe he has misread the market.
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