Search results matching tag 'News Corporation'

Yorkshire Post and Scotsman publisher considers pay wall

255762 — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:38:00 GMT

The publisher of The Scotsman newspaper, Johnston Press, is reported to be considering erecting a pay wall.

According to a report on Holdthefrontpage Johnston Press, which also owns The Yorkshire Post and Lancashire Evening Post, is to introduce paid-for access to some of its local websites from next week.

If this is true this could open the floodgates. Johnston Press is a regional newspaper powerhouse in the UK. It owns 18 daily newspapers and 300 weekly papers. Apparently it is considering putting the pay wall around those weeklies. It is an interesting place to start an experiment. Most of the talk has been focused on dailies, but if you start with weeklies dailies could well follow suit. Erecting a pay wall around local content could be a game changer as rivals would look to follow -- and my guess would be quickly.

Although my guess is it would only make this move in markets where it has the upper hand. In more competitive local markets this might not happen. So I don't see a unilateral move; more market by market.

An interesting question arises as to whether this could also involve pulling content from Google? Following the two US news groups, MediaNews Group and A.H Belo, saying they are considering following News Corporation there is a groundswell of change taking place here.

Holdthefrontpage has few details other than "pay walls are to be introduced on a selection of Johnston Press-owned weekly newspaper websites from Monday". It adds that managers have told staff that JP intends to roll-out the paid-for model across the company in-line with the industry moves.

PaidContent makes a good point and questions as to whether Johnston Press "is relying on the 'brand' value of its local newspapers too much here and hoping that a town’s collective memory of reading a title for generations will translate into revenue online". Good question and I guess we will know the answer soon enough.

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Two consider following News Corp – does Google have a problem?

255762 — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:38:00 GMT

Google insists it is not worried about News Corporation pulling its content, but as two more news groups start talking about doing the same the move towards paid content or pay walls means for certain that others will follow suit. And that could change things

Media News Group and A.H. Belo have added their names to that of News Corp which revealed earlier this week it was talking to Microsoft about an exclusive search deal with Bing.

It is probably important to stress here that MediaNews and A.H. Belo aren't necessarily going to do exactly what News Corp is. The Dallas Morning News publisher Belo says it is looking at introducing subscriptions on its newspaper websites and would remove that content, but look to keep other news available to Google.

Neither are talking about a unilateral pullout, but it is a strong indication of what will happen next. More publishers will follow. For those that implement pay walls it makes sense to hide some content.

Google will tell you that it is not concerned at publishers removing their content. Well it has billions of dollars and its business is about more than search (although that is the cornerstone of it).

In a statement, a Google spokesperson said Google News consistently sends news sites about 100,000 clicks a minute, but that no one’s forced to be indexed. “Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found, so very few choose not to include their material in Google News and web search,” the statement said. “But if they tell us not to include it, we don’t.”

Google has so much more going on these days, but this could clearly give rivals an upper hand and make search the battle ground it should be.

If say the New York Times and Tribune Inc, to name two in the US, follow suit and say they are talking to Microsoft as well what does Google do then? Surely it makes sense for the search giant to offer up some cash? Frankly, it seems rude not to.

Google as much as we all love it (go Gmail) is when it comes to content like the guest who turns up at your party and hoovers all the food and booze and brings nothing. Obviously Google was invited, but some quid pro quo wouldn't go a miss.

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Times editor (UK) gives details on paid content plans

255762 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:36:00 GMT

James Harding, the editor of The Times, has revealed a few details about the paper's plan to charge for content as part of Rupert Murdoch's pay wall ambitions.

According to MediaGuardian and Press Gazette, Harding told the Society of Editors conference in Stanstead, Essex, that the paper would launch a subscription service for online access early next year. The announcement follows news earlier this month that News Corp would not hit its target to launch a pay wall by the end of this year.

He said that The Times and The Sunday Times were likely to lead Murdoch's paid content initiative and be the first to charge for digital content in Murdoch's News Corporation media empire.

Harding said less frequent visitors to Times.co.uk would be able to purchase 24 hours access, which would likely cost the same as buying a print edition of the Times. The paper is currently 90p, but £1 seems like a nice round figure to me.

What we know for sure is that it won't be micropayments. Harding dismissed the idea of micro-payments for individual articles, which is being looked at by some other news organisations.

He likened the free access model to "window shopping down Oxford Street", but said these people were not coming into "our shops".

"From spring of next year we will start charging for the digital edition of the Times. We're working on the exact pricing model, but we'd charge for a day's paper, for a 24-hour sign-up to the Times. We'll also establish a subscription price as well," Harding said.

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Consumers Won't Pay for Newspaper Content

2619528 — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:14:00 GMT

The story that won't seem to lie down and die quietly rumbles on as News Corp desperately continues to try to lead their fellow publishers into pay-for-content models. If they could get everyone to follow suit, this strategy may well work - hence James Murdoch's recent vitriolic attack on the BBC.

This area is being explored this week by PaidContent, who have commissioned a poll by Harris Interactive and asks the question if consumers will pay and if so, how much? And the answer is not encouraging in any way for the publishing industry. Firstly, only 5% of respondents say that they would pay if their favourite website began charging, with 74% saying that they would simply seek out a free alternative. 8% said that they would just read the free headlines, which is quite a clever work. The final 12% said that they didn't know what they'd do, which I guess is what happens if you include Sun readers in the poll. Only jesting, for those you Sun readers out there, but are you sure you're in the right place? Sorry, must stop.

If that wasn't bad enough, the 5% would said that they would pay, consistently chose the lowest possible option they were given when asked how much they'd fork out. 72% said that they'd pay £10 for an annual subscription, 71% said that they'd be prepared to cough up 25p for a day pass and 68% said that they'd pay 1 - 2p to access an article.

If we do some back of the envelope maths on the basis that The Sun has 30 million online users, 5% makes about 1.5 million who would pay. If they each pay the £10 annual subscription that they claim, this would generate £15 million per annum - nice to have, but hardly the windfall anticipated at only 0.005% of News Corp's turnover. Having said that, if Unique Users plummet like that, advertising revenues will quickly follow suit, so if there are any net increases in revenue, it's likely to be marginal in the best possible case scenario.

Rupert Murdoch also announced last week that the WSJ is going to start charging for access via mobile, a strategy I suggested here that they explore a few weeks back, so nice to see he's reading :-) However, while they haven't yet announced detailed plans, it sounds like they're going for a pretty obvious and I'm afraid, out of date, approach of sticking content behind a paywall and what's worse, they'll be charging mobile users (Blackberry and iPhone anyway) double that paid by PC users - $2 per week, rather than $1.

There's an enduring myth (one of 10 discussed here) about the mobile channel that citizens will happily pay on mobile for products and services they expect for free online. They won't. So while the answer to publishers' woes might involve mobile, they're going to have to get much more creative in how they approach the problem. The old equation of

Cover Price + Advertising = Huge Profits

no longer computes in digital media. While advertising revenues can still generate a substantial contribution, publishers need to look at new and creative ways to supplement their income, not rely on business models that are more than a century old and are about as valuable as last century's news.

Paid content and closing TheLondonPaper

255762 — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:05:00 GMT

No one thing killed TheLondonPaper, but one of my first thoughts on hearing the sad news that TheLondonPaper was to close was is this part of Rupert Murdoch's paid content strategy?

The facts are pretty simple: London is the most competitive newspaper market in the world and NI Free Newspapers, which publishes the TheLondonPaper, posted a £12.96m loss this year and £16.48m last year.

Unless there is a radical shift in the economy there is little prospect of TheLondonPaper being profitable any time soon. London Lite doesn't make any money either and even after the withdrawal of its rival it still faces an uphill battle as does The Evening Standard, which leads online with TheLondonPaper's closure (London Lite doesn't have a website).

Whether this will be good news for The Evening Standard is tough to say while London Lite continues to publish. Besides, the Standard had problems long before the arrival of London's evening freesheets.

Given that News Corporation has stated that it intends to charge for all forms of online content, a free newspaper and its free website makes ever less sense. Maybe this is the reason that the website will close along with the print title.

Newspapers are closing around the world and unless publishers are making money out of content increasingly they are not going to publish it.

The closure of TheLondonPaper with its 500,000 copies daily is a radical example of that.

Rupert Murdoch is not usually the one to blink first, and he has in the past clobbered rivals with price wars (the Sun is still 20p), but given the changing economic model for content and the fall in advertising revenues not blinking first no longer makes sense.

For Associated Newspapers it might be a hollow victory. Yes its situation is immediately improved, but there is no change to the weakness of overall market conditions.

In his statement James Murdoch said that the move was about streamlining operations and focusing on its core titles. As News Corp prepares to consider a rollout of paid content it makes perfect sense.

Looking at the TheLondonPaper in light of paid content it looks like a remainder and one that has not been carried.

None of this, of course, makes getting money out of consumers for the content that News Corp plans to charge for any easier, but then we will have to wait and see what it does next. As one thing is for sure, Murdoch is full of surprises.

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Mobile Rescues Traditional Publishers

2619528 — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:43:00 GMT

The big story of last week was News Corporation's eye-watering losses, although much of the subsequent ongoing chatter and debate was about the remark Rupert Murdoch made about New Corp's intention to start charging for content. He's been accused of anything from wishful-thinking, right through to "highly astute" and if he reads about himself (I suspect he doesn't), he must have a conflicted self-image right now.

Of course, what Mr Murdoch didn't say is how he's going to start charging for content - who knows if even they have that answer right now? But simply sticking everything behind a pay-wall is unlikely to work for lots of reasons - the most compelling being that it hasn't worked that way for anyone else, apart from a few highly specialised publishers with (fairly) exclusive and valuable news.

However, mobile could provide part of the solution for beleaguered publishers and if I were working for News Corp, that's where I would be focusing my efforts on. In time, it could actually be the whole solution if you buy the argument that we're on the cusp of the Post-PC era. I don't really want to go down that rabbit hole right now, but many, many more of us will be accessing News Corp's content via mobiles in 5 year's time than those quaint and quirky PC things that are stuck to desks or laptops that we have to lug around.

There's several interesting models that might help. The FT's iPhone App is a very slick combination of content presentation and marketing. It's pretty well known so I won't go into it here, but it provides a very clever upgrade path from free to full subscription, as people get addicted to the service.

The FT however misses a trick in offering upgrades - though in fairness it has to be missed at this stage as there isn't an alternative. To upgrade, the consumer needs to visit the website and input credit card details. If I'm on my mobile, this is a poor user experience and complicated to complete. In fact, I'd be willing to bet most people trying to subscribe from the App drop out of the purchase process. However, all iPhone users have access to a latent billing system via their iTunes account, which could easily be used to debit micropayments or subscriptions with the simple completion of their iTunes password.

Obviously, Apple has to introduce this billing model and be prepared to share revenues at a reasonable commission - somewhere nearer to that charged by a credit card company than a mobile operator (around 50%). But the opportunity is there to introduce a universal, scalable, painless, easy-to-use micropayment service that has been the missing piece of the jigsaw needed to monetise content online. It's still missing via your PC, but it's so nearly available on your mobile and that's one reason why mobile holds out so much promise.

Micropayments via an App may indeed work for some content in some of the News Corp portfolio, but more general news will still be offered free by rivals - if only by the BBC. At that point, a different strategy will be needed and innovative solutions are required. One such example is NearbyNow, a Silicon Valley based startup, who have been successfully working with several magazine publishers.

The idea is to move publishers further up the value chain by changing them from companies that are paid for taking advertising, to also allowing them a cut of the sales that their ads and articles generate. They do this by taking products featured in their (iPhone App) Magazine and telling people where their nearest stockist is located, as well as allowing them to buy online there and then.

This hybrid model offers publishers a potential to solve the real problem, which is how to maintain profitability in the digital era, not how they apply an outdated business model of directly charging consumers for content. It's not the silver bullet the industry needs, but it does offer a clue as to how publishing needs to evolve through innovation, not by trying to stuff the spitting and scratching content cat back into the old and ripped paid-for bag.

MySpace goes into rapid retreat/embraces its future

255762 — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:51:00 GMT

There's carnage at MySpace. Almost 800 jobs cut within a week and the closed sign is being hung up around the world. It looks like today we are seeing the social media map being reshaped.

Last week MySpace laid off 420 staff in its US offices. Today it has cut a further 300 internationally and is closing down a host of offices as it retrenches and faces up to its place in the world.

In the new world order of MySpace, London, Berlin, and Sydney will be the primary regional hubs for MySpace as offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain get the chop as has Travis Katzis, the MySpace SVP and MD, who is leaving, having grown staff around the world from two to more than 400.

The cuts have come as new MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta has been given the job of re-envisioning the social networking site and helping it "operate as a nimble and entrepreneurial company with the adaptive mentality of a start-up".

That has come against a backdrop of MySpace usage falling rapidly away. In the last year the number of minutes spent on the site has fallen by 31% (although it remains top for video) while Facebook soared 700%.

MySpace has lost its place as a general social networking site and these tough cuts are obvious signs that it has accepted this.

Where MySpace is strong, is in music and video or entertainment more generally. As a place for promoting new music and bands, as well as movies, MySpace has its niche, but is that enough?

I saw a headline last week on Adage, which posed this question neatly: Can Bruno (as in Sasha Baron Cohen) save MySpace? Or "MeinSpace" as the campy Austrian character calls it.

'Bruno' is another movie that has close ties with MySpace, which has a special MeinSpace.com hosted page.

The story detailed how 'Bruno' was only part of MySpace efforts to forge deep ties with the entertainment industry and major studios.

Something seems to be working. Bruno has 330,000-odd friends on MySpace, but only 31,500 on Facebook and around 14,000 followers on Twitter (who are these people?) where his username is @brunovassup.

For MySpace this is retrenchment, but clearly the right thing to do and from its perspective it is clearly better for it to embrace this rather simply try to continue to compete as a more general social networking site such as Facebook.

This suggests several things. There are a whole bunch of special interest gaps out there.

Fake profiles and anonymity have always been the order of the day on MySpace. As some have said before this was like Twitter in the early days, but increasingly Twitter has become more like Facebook. People have ditched their fake names and more and more only want to connect people who only have their real names.

I started out as GordonM before changing my username to my actual name. It makes sense.

The fakery and anonymity means that MySpace is taking on increasingly the properties of niche interest social networking sites. If you are a cyclist for instance you probably go to Bikeradar or a runner you go to Runner's World. And when you do you are likely to be a member of them in addition to broader sites like LinkedIn and Facebook.

This gives us a world where we have a number of top level broad interest sites (like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) and more special interest sites (both international and local) of which a retrenched MySpace appears to be one of.

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The BBC and Digital Britain failure

255762 — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:23:00 GMT

Of course, internet access for all is really super. Hurrah. But the failure and misjudgement by Digital Britain on other big questions leave me totally underwhelmed. There's no progress on a Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide deal and the easy option of top slicing the BBC licence fee is a huge mistake. It is a slippery road.

First up once you have taken BBC licence fee cash you will do it again. It will give the next government so help us all the encouragement it needs to dig into the BBC a little deeper.

Early evidence of this comes if you look at the remarks of Conservative MP John Whittingdale who rebuked BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons for his robust defence of the corporation. Whittingdale says it is up to Parliament to decide the level and organisation of the licence fee. The man is an idiot.

He wants to organise how the licence is spent? Does he want to run the BBC as well? Of course, he does. I say again so help us all.

The BBC, as Sir Michael said, are guardians of the licence fee. Some might say they need to improve their guardianship in certain areas, but it does a lot and it does a lot really well.

There are no doubt some in the commercial sector, if not many, who welcome this. They would like nothing more than to see the BBC taken down a few pegs.

That is a mistake as it only plays into the hands into the hands of international media companies, like News Corporation and Bertelsmann, who are the only people who really benefit by taking cash away from the BBC.

They do not want to see a BBC that is strong enough to sit alongside the other big players in the broadcasting and media landscape; one that invests in high-quality journalism and other public service content, and supporting the creative economy. As we have seen this week as it has proved itself just about the best around with its coverage of the election aftermath in Iran.

It you could think of one way to waste money then spending it on yet more little-watched local news produced by ITV is the way to do it.

The problem with local news at the moment (and the BBC does a lot of it) is that it is not local enough. As someone said to me during the heavy snow we had this year all they wanted from local news was detailed coverage of what was happening in their village/town and beyond. That isn't available.

What is available is the chance to watch local politicians warble on about whatever it is they warble on about. Local politicians are the only ones who really enjoy this.

Why publicly fund two sets of local news? I really don't get it. Better to relax regulations on regional newspaper mergers and give those groups more freedom and encourage the development of online hyperlocal websites where people can find the information they really want.

ITN boss John Hardie talks about competing with the BBC locally (to provide "much-valued choice of sources and opinions"), but I think really all he wants (like everyone else) is more money to strengthen his organisation's future. It needs to do that without the BBC.

Local news is the last place we need that choice. In some markets its, frankly, overrated.

The BBC has already proposed better ways than Digital Britain of working with the commercial sector and moving forward through partnership.

"The BBC has come up with an ambitious programme of partnerships to help the wider industry support public service content during tough economic times. The BBC will continue discussions with Channel 4 about a possible joint venture with BBC Worldwide that would create value for both parties."

He is also right when he says top-slicing would damage BBC output, reduce accountability and compromise independence. It would he says become a slush fund. As I said, once it has been done once it will be done again. A Conservative government will not be able to keep its hands off of it ("did someone say there's a big pot of money around?"). The temptation will be too great: Digital Britain will have provided all the justification that it needs.

That is why top slicing must be rejected.

Lyons is also right when he says that the move would lead to the licence fee being seen as another form of general taxation. He says the BBC Trust will not sit quietly by and watch this happen.

"In particular, the Trust is not convinced of the proposal in the Digital Britain report to apply any of the surplus to fund a second regional news operation. There has not yet been a full and open debate about the suggested costs of these services, and it appears that the current proposals have failed to take into account potential sources of commercial funding as well as alternative sources of public funding."

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Amazon talking to Twitter? Really it should be buying Digg

255762 — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:32:00 GMT

There is speculation on Valley Wag about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos being in talks with Twitter. He's already an investor, but is Amazon looking to a future that might include buying into the real time web?

The Gawker Media blog says it has heard whispers that Amazon.com is talking to Twitter about buying it. Bezos is already a personal investor in Twitter. His Bezos Expeditions and Spark Capital invested $15m last summer.

If it bought Twitter (which today is reported to be bringing forward plans to charge) you could see it integrating it possibly with Kindle as well as Amazon.com.

Valley Wag reports the Amazon/Twitter rumour in a post that is not chiefly about Twitter, but about Amazon buying social media news rating site Digg.com.

Not heard that one? No surprise, there have been no reports about this it's just that Valley Wag sees it as a perfect fit and is floating the idea. Its logic is pretty simple and goes like this: Digg needs to sell itself, it has a lot of traffic with very little revenues, but just how valuable is a site that rates?

Good question, I've always like Digg, but it is difficult to see its value. Buyers who have run the slide rule over the business, including Current and News Corporation, have decided that it is not for them. A deal with Google fell apart for different reasons relating to questions of engineering.

Valley Wag makes a cogent point: News Corp and Current looked at Digg as a media play, but community-generated sites like Digg aren't that advertiser friendly. It isn't really a media play although with News Corp's ownership of gaming sites like IGN.com, you can see what sparked the initial interest.

Digg is still hugely popular, but earlier this year visits to Twitter surpassed Digg for the first time. Maybe no surprise Twitter is growing like wildfire. I thought recently that it had widespread, but not "mass" appeal, but as it permeates ever deeper into celebrity/popular culture that is probably not correct. Seeing Twitter in a headline is not a surprise. It is becoming common place.

I digress, Amazon's user reviews are a gold mine. Valley Wag quotes one unnamed study that suggests Amazon.com makes $2.7bn (yes billion) annually in incremental sales because of its user-written reviews.

I always check user reviews on Amazon and find them largely helpful. Was this review helpful it asks? Sure it was [click to vote].

If you look at it like that then it makes a really good fit. The system is very similar to what Digg does.

Valley Wag suggests that this could be a bonus when it comes to Amazon.com's Kindle e-book reader as Amazon already charges for some news feeds available for free on the web for the Kindle.

See where that's going? Would you make a micro payment for a really good piece of user voted content to read on the Kindle? If it had loads of Diggs? That would certainly cheer up magazine and newspaper publishers as they wrestle with how to find ways of charging for content.

Of course, Jeff Bezos could go crazy and do a three way Amazon/Twitter/Digg. Amazon can afford it.

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Positive story about the future of newspapers

255762 — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:28:00 GMT

Rupert Murdoch has been putting the doomsayers of the newspaper industry in their place. The future he says is still bright, but it is in case you were in any doubt by now definitely online.

In a speech he has knocked the doomsayers who are predicting the internet will kill off newspapers. He calls them "misguided cynics". The title of the speech ("The Future of Newspapers: Moving Beyond Dead Trees") told you all you needed to know about his thinking (and those of his advisers) about the future of newspapers. He was reminding newspaper journalists almost that they often think too literally about where they are published and that simply because they're no longer "in print (on the printed page)" this does not signal the end - far from it this is only the beginning.

"Too many journalists seem to take a perverse pleasure in ruminating on their pending demise," Murdoch said, "Unlike the doom and gloomers, I believe that newspapers will reach new heights in the 21st century. Readers want what they've always wanted: a source they can trust. That has always been the role of great newspapers in the past. And that role will make newspapers great in the future."

Murdoch has always bet on newspapers, but he has also bet big online and that's what he is still doing so in this speech, which says there are opportunities online as web traffic rises and circulations continue a steady fall as the slow shift of power from the the printed page to online continues. His words also underscored the areas that digital publishers need to focus on if they want to get it right and realise these opportunities.

The march in that direction is irrefutable and quiet unstoppable. That's the obvious bit. Just look at the Christian Science Monitor as an example of this (although really, I sincerely believe that if they had changed the name of that paper a few years ago it would not be ceasing publication) as it goes online only (with a weekly magazine in support).

The challenge/opportunity that Murdoch talks about is how newspapers crack the conundrum of making cash out of their ever mightier online operations as more and more people choose this way to consume the 21st versions of newspapers.

He said the real business of newspaper owners "isn't printing on dead trees". Newspapers themselves are not the medium, but rather the qualities that good newspaper businesses embody: giving readers great journalism and great judgment – words they trust, which is why we all turn to our favoured media brands online when we want the answer to some question of the day. That's clearly where the future growth lies in the most trusted news, best communities, bloggers and other content.

"If papers provide readers with news they can trust, we'll see gains in circulation — on our web pages, through our RSS feeds, in emails delivering customised news and advertising, to mobile phones. In this coming century, the form of delivery may change, but the potential audience for our content will multiply many times over.

"The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around," he said. "It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today. But the thud it makes as it lands will continue to echo around society and the world."

The point about the qualities of newspaper businesses and how those qualities can be applied to where ever newspaper words appear is really the heart of the debate about the future of newspapers beyond those trees.

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