Great news.First comes the news that Chairman Rupert has copped a pounding across the board.
But it's especially pleasing that MySpace was amongst the heaviest hit. Since News Corp took it over, they've demonstrated how to make clients walk ... across the road to Facebook. And you don't have to ask complicated questions to find out why. And even better that Fox has slipped 16% in its prime time audiences, the steepest drop amongst the big four networks.
I'd like to think it was because people were switching off the fair and balanced stuff, but hey who cares. And then there's newspapers, where operating income fell 63% (not to mention the large write down on the WSJ taken last December).
You can read more details at Bloombergs here or Glenn Dyer at Crikey here, for free. But don't expect free to last for very long. Using the WSJ model, Chairman Rupert intends to start charging for content on the full to overflowing intertubes this fiscal year.
“The tumultuous and unprecedented change affecting the entire media sector, particularly at newspapers and broadcasters, cannot be ignored,” Murdoch said on a conference call. “The digital revolution has opened many new methods of distribution, but it has not made content free.”
Which is the second bit of great news. Because at last Piers Akerman, Janet Albrechtsen, Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt, and all the sundry gaggle of loons available on the pages of The Australian will be locked behind a paywall. As Chairman Rupert notes:
“Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting.”
Indeedy and the ranting of commentariat columnists isn't cheap either, but will I miss Christopher Pearson if asked to pay for his insights into the Catholic Church in The Australian? Well you might, but somehow I think for me it'll be a pass.
Who could ask for a better result? Pearson behind a paywall, and me forced to go off to read Catholic Online to get my fix of papal hijinks. For free. Unless the Pope joins with Chairman Rupert in charging true believers.
There will of course be agonizing choices for some - will they go with Piers Akerman and Tim Blair at the Daily Terror, or will they settle for the high class scribbling of Janet Albrechtsen? Or will they be able to do a News Corp pack of favorite loons from across the board?
Not that it troubles me much. This site will quietly retire, knowing that nothing more needs to be said about commentariat columnists. If you want to pay for your indoctrination, fair enough. But why on earth pay to be offended on a daily basis. Even for an ex-Catholic that's lashing and purging the flesh just a bit too hard.
And another thing. Why on earth would you pay for the pleasure of generating the content you find on Tim Blair's site. Blair's blog consists of a few snide asides, matched up to plenty of links to other people's content - including illegal songs on YouTube. And really that's all just there so that the tribe of Blairites can get their jollies by ranting about the juicy bones and dog whistles designed to appeal to the devotees. Pay for the pleasure of commenting on Blair's blog when you can do it on millions for free. Well I guess so, perversity is innate, so maybe the Chairman is on to something.
Meantime, here's hoping that in the war that follows Chairman Rupert's war on Google and others (the leeches and parasites), some sites will declare a retaliatory strike on News Corp, with sundry bannings and much infighting about their links and their ripping off of content (yes, that means you The Punch, Australia's most tepid conversation when not ripping free content from the first few pages of Google images or YouTube).
Oh it's going to be a great year on the intertubes.
But can one man and one organization change the way the intertubes has developed over the past decade? Rein it in, corral it, and point the punters in the direction of cash flowing the Versailles called News Corp back to its original gothic splendor?
As Dyer points out, it will be a great opportunity for Fairfax to make a leap and a bound, unless they too lose their nerve and develop a Rupert-like desire to charge:
... the charging, when it comes, will be selective and targeted: in Australia it gives Fairfax the best chance for years to gain ascendancy over Murdoch by not charging for its news websites. Charging for access to information in his Australian papers and News.com.au would drive surfers to Fairfax in droves.
Absolutely. Why would you pay for Janet Albrechtsen when you can get Miranda the Devine for free?
I keed, I keed, there's more to life than the denizens of loon pond, and some people will always pay for the content they want and like. I do, even if I pay for much less than I should. But Crikey in its editorial - and Crikey is a site with some experience of trying to get punters to hand over cash - remains dubious:
It all sounds so rational. Quality journalism is expensive, readers are accustomed to paying for it on newsprint, and just to make sure there won’t be a migration of readers to free websites, Murdoch says his newspapers will be “making our content better and differentiated from other people”. After 15 years of giving away their content online, newspaper publishers will simply flip a switch, make the content better, erect a pay wall and expect people to pay for something they can get for nothing elsewhere.
No-one, even Rupert Murdoch, knows how many people will pay for online journalism. No-one knows what will happen to online advertising revenues if that switch is flipped. No-one, including Rupert Murdoch, knows what impact such a move will have on the circulations of newspapers. And therefore no-one knows how charging for online content will disrupt or benefit the newspaper business.
Despite the bravado and the apparent rationality of the argument, this is all a gigantic gamble by desperate newspaper owners to plug the deep cracks in their business models that have turned newspapers from 20th century money machines into 21st century legacy media.
Bring it on I say, and the sooner the better. The sooner parasitic sites like this die off, the sooner the intertubes will be able to free up for better, differentiated content, full of high quality musings of the kind you can already find in the Daily Terror on a daily basis.
Why until this week I had no idea that marriage was a matter of nuts and bolts. But would I pay for that kind of insight?
Ummm ... now exactly how much were you asking me to pay?
(Below: exciting cash flow inducing content from today's online News Corp Courier Mail, including picture specials on the show, the world's scariest bridges, and Canada in flames. Put me down for a dozen a day, and spare no expense in the delivery).
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