The question for 2011 - a minor, trivial, unimportant one - is how much longer The Punch is going to last.
On a superficial level, since it's a trivial question, it's amusing to punch in the site's address to the many web site value machines that festoon the danker parts of the pond. These are based on silly logarithms and a bit of instant searching, but it's fun all the same.
The result? The Punch turned out to have daily page views around the 100,000 mark, daily revenue potential of $50-60 bucks, and an innate value of somewhere between $40 and $60k (though one site punched up the value to three quarters of a million, and good luck with Rupert's hunt for a punter who'll spring for that and snap the site up, and perhaps merge it with Crikey).
It's just as amusing to punch in details of Australian Screen, a flawed website that the Australian Government splashed one and a half million smackeroos on, in a quest to bring Australian screen culture to the world, and see it has page views under 5,000, a daily earnings potential of five to ten bucks (not that anybody's trying for that kind of lotto prize), and a total worth anywhere between five hundred and five thousand bucks.
It's all good harmless fun, and meaningless as well, but a deeper point about The Punch is what possible purpose it serves the Murdoch empire.
At the moment you can read the likes of David Penberthy indulging in gherkinish rants about gherkin greens, as in Who needs Pauline when you've got Bob Brown?, but that also turned up in the Daily Terror in the "Your Say" blog, under the more appropriately vicious header Good intentions washed away by slime green rant.
No doubt there are many who just love to read Penberthy explaining how Pauline Hanson and Bob Brown are just one and the same policy pods in the same green pea - oh enough with the slimy green metaphors - and some days the deeper thoughts of Penberthy even reach the exalted heights of The Australian in a kind of intellectual code-sharing which makes airline scheduling look simple-minded.
No doubt there are many who want to read about Penberthy being a true believer in relation to climate change, but at the same time completely incapable of deciphering any connection between Australian coal and climate change. Because you know we ship it to China, and so anything that happens to the coal at their end is their fault ... Pontius Pilate, bring me that bowl of water, I feel like washing my hands.
But while all this is good fun, what does this plethora of Penberthy - some might say a virulent pox of Penberthyisms - imply when it comes to the Murdoch paywall, still coming to an antipodes near you?
The value add these days in newspapers isn't the news. People can pick up the news anywhere anytime from dozens of sources, radio, television and online, and always free, and to make people pay for their information/news mix online, the value proposition has always revolved around the bonus provided by commentators, features, in depth insights, exclusive content (hence The Australian's wailing about WikiLeaks giving Fairfax the nod) and by the communities that can be developed around such contents and brands.
The great hope for the empire has been the tablet, and in particular the iPad, and it seems that The Daily - chairman Rupert's attempt to scrounge ninety cents a day (not a week) from the pockets and purses of the American punter - is finally getting close to launch, long after Mark Day first announced it was a week away from launching back in November 2010.
Media World Awaits The Daily to Forge Model for iPad Content is a typical preview full of flickering hope and sponsors and desire, as the devil Murdoch climbs into bed with the devil Jobs, in a deal which sees the Apple store gain an initial exclusive window.
And the way it will work means that punters will have the pleasure of paying their subscription, and paying again by copping advertising, albeit high tech high style promos ...
The Times? Wasn't that an important English newspaper once upon a Thames? Didn't it vanish into the ether ... ?
It seems that The Daily's launch has been pushed back a few weeks, and it might not be until February that the subscription software is sorted, but meanwhile the dollar a day got the intertubes punters hot under the collar (see the comments in 'The Daily' to Lead the Way on iPad Magazine Subscriptions, Skip iAds).
There's been tremendous excitement at the notion that the The Daily was about to be launched by Murdoch and Jobs getting together on stage at the CES show, though most of these stories (Jobs, Murdoch Unveiling iPad Mag Jan. 19) were written before Jobs announced a medical leave (here).
But there's little doubt that the latest attempt by Chairman Rupert to pick the pockets of punters isn't far away.
Well the content won't be disturbing my iPad, in much the same way as I make it a religious rule not to buy content - apart from a few apps - from Apple.
But the bigger question is how in the future an activity like The Punch - an attempt at a blog, done on a shoe string, and relying on a few hacks along with the ego of contributors driven to make free contributions to a branded platform - will fit the empire, and how all the blogs and commentators attached to the various News Corp brands will fare as the demand to monetise content grows ever more strong ...
It's bad enough that there's plenty of free content out there on the full to overflowing intertubes, but what's the point of The Punch cannibalising content and contributors, and sending them out into the world for diddly squat, while other arms of the organisation try to sell the thoughts of the very same contributors from behind a paywall?
If exclusivity of content is what will tempt the punters to pay, then this is a kind of pimping for free ...
Well it's for greater minds than the pond's to sort, and truth to tell, the notion of paying for David Penberthy's thoughts seems utterly incomprehensible, and perhaps even mystical, when even reading them for free is enough to induce mild nausea for an hour or two ...
But if someone thinks The Punch can be turned into The Daily down under, please someone, anyone tell them that they're dreaming. Pay to read Penbo and Bronwyn Bishop? There, there, redback spiders in the purse, don't be troubled, don't be scared, dream on in peace ...
But perhaps we could rejig Penbo's headline.
Who needs an iPad copy of the The Daily telling us about Pauline and Bob for a buck a day, when we've got Penbo slagging off Bob Brown for free.
(Below: the Daily Terror rant, 0 comments, and below that The Punch form of the rant with a new header and many more comments. Go figure, Penbo the cannibal at work).
Man, I get between 2000 and 40,000 hits a day on my Flickr page, and all I do is upload scary pics from old cookbooks!
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