Pressure builds to end Web users’ free ride (Rupert Murdoch strikes again)

[WilliamPitt]

Pressure builds to end Web users’ free ride
Decline in ad income has media sites in bind

By Richard Perez-Pena and Tim Arango
New York Times / December 28, 2009

NEW YORK - Over more than a decade, consumers became accustomed to the sweet, steady flow of free news, pictures, videos, and music on the Internet. Paying was for suckers and old fogeys. Content, like wild horses, wanted to be free. Now, however, there are growing signs that this free ride is drawing to a close.

Newspapers are weighing whether to ask online readers to pay for at least some of what they offer, as a handful of papers, including The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, already do. Indeed, in the next several weeks, industry executives and analysts expect some publications to take the plunge.

Rupert Murdoch, beyond charging for access to The Wall Street Journal, has talked about forming a partnership with a single search engine, which would pay him for the rights to scour the news and entertainment programming produced by his company, News Corp., rather than letting all search engines crawl his sites. Hulu, which is owned partly by Murdoch’s company, is considering charging viewers to watch some of the TV shows it now streams for free.

Magazine publishers, meanwhile, have banded together to try to create their own version of the iTunes store, aiming for a day when they can sell enhanced versions of what they have been giving away. And more and more media companies are planning to charge for apps on iPhones and other mobile devices, as well as on the Amazon Kindle and other e-readers.

Media companies of all stripes built their business models on the assumption advertising revenue would continue to pour in. But with advertising in a tailspin, they must shrink, shut down, or find some way to shift more of the cost burden to consumers, the same consumers who have so blissfully become accustomed to Web content that costs them nothing.

So will future consumers look back on 2010 as the year they finally had to reach into their own pockets? Industry specialists have their doubts, saying that pay systems might work, but in limited ways and only for some sites. Publishers who early this year sounded as though they were raring to go have not yet taken the leap, and the executives who advocate change tend to range from vague to cautious in making predictions about fundamentally changing the finances of their battered businesses.

But one thing clearly has shifted already, in a year rife with magazine closings and newspaper bankruptcies: Conventional wisdom among media companies has swung hard from the belief that pay walls would curb traffic and stifle ad revenue to the view that media businesses need to try something new, because the current path appears to lead to extinction.

The rest: http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/12/28/pressure_builds_to_end_web_users_free_ride/

[Captain Hilts]

1. I don't mind paying for creative content. You 'vote' with your dollars. nt

[customerserviceguy]

10. Neither do I

but how much news is really worth paying for? Damned little.

About the only reason people read Internet news is that it's free. Start charging for it, and we'll find other ways to entertain ourselves with free content.

[rpannier]

61. In addition

I can find the same news provided by international publications that are still free
I don't need to find a story at the Wall Street Journal. I can just go to the Japan Times website (English) and read the same story

[customerserviceguy]

65. There will always be someone willing to give away news

in order to attract eyeballs.

If I'm wrong, then people will figure out how to pay for only the news they want. If it costs me a couple of cents to read an article, you can bet that it will be politics over entertainment news every time.

[starroute]

36. There's content and then there's real content

I don't mind paying for a well-reviewed book or movie that I know I want. But no way am I going to pay just to click on a random news link without knowing if it has the information I need or anything more recent that the story I read this morning.

Information content and creative content are not the same and cannot be lumped together.

But even on the creative side, if ad revenues are down it's because the economy's in a tailspin. So how are consumers expected to be willing to pay for online content when they're already cutting back on spending to a degree that impacts advertising?

I suspect that the real answer for the news media may lie in speed and freshness. People are willing to pay to see a hit movie without waiting for the DVD. At least some people are willing to pay for breaking news -- if it really is breaking -- because they see either a financial advantage or an element of prestige in being a jump ahead.

Part of the newspapers' problem is that their slogan has always been "Today's news, brought to you tomorrow morning." If they're going to be competitive, they have to at the very least be as quick as the Net itself, if not quicker. They have to add reporters and local bureaus instead of cutting back as they keep doing. They have to charge for what's hot when it's hot and let it pass into the public domain as it cools down.

If there's one thing we know about the future, it's that it will be faster than the present. Trying to put speed bumps on the information highway is not a valid response.

[Captain Hilts]

44. Folks now look to sources they know they'll usually agree with. nt

[JDPriestly]

38. You don't mind paying because you can pay.

Most Americans can afford an computer and an internet hook-up, but not paying for content.

Those of us, for example on Social Security would simply not pay. We would form our own networks. We don't have that kind of money.

[rpannier]

62. That may be true

But, as I mentioned to another poster

You can find 95% of these stories (if not all) on International News sites.
The majority of news publications put out their stuff in English and it is free

[Atman]

2. We don't PAY? Tell that to my service provider.

By that standard, we should stop FREE television! And FREE telephone service! FUCK YOU, Murdoch. We're paying through the nose to Comcast, Charter, et al. It's your own goddamn fault you're on the wrong side of the income stream with your dinosaur newspapers and fake news. Fuck you, Murdoch. Just fuck fucking you, you fuck.

.

[HillbillyBob]

5. Atman I am remiss I meant to include that we do pay providers now

our net hook up costs a chunk of our budget..we live in the boonies and the only way to get internet or tv is via Dish TV.
I will ad that muderoch has not business being in the US buying up American companies and trying to undermine(try hell!) our country. damn good job you murderous sob.

I have blocked the faux nuz sites from my channel selection why should i pay ransom to a foreigner agent of destruction.

[tbyg52]

16. You can get internet from Dish TV?

(I'm in the boonies as well - on dialup, which I'd love to correct.)

[Occulus]

56. .

Whoops, DU burped

[Occulus]

57. Yes

Satellite internet. Pretty expensive, comparably slow, affected by the weather and other interference, needs line of sight. Don't get it unless you absolutely must to get a broadband connection at all.

If you have to do a satellite internet connection, try a dedicated satellite internet company like HughesNet or some such. Be prepared to pay through the nose.

[dysfunctional press]

64. i blocked faux noise from our comcast cable, too...

and when i put in the 'parental code', i closed my eyes and pushed random buttons- so i couldn't unblock it if i wanted to. although i don't know why i'd want to...:shrug:

[Enthusiast]

8. +1 on the "fuck you" part. nt

[Statistical]

25. How much of your monthly ISP bill goes into content holders hands?

I'll help you out 0.0000%

[Occulus]

58. So, cable companies don't actually pay for licenses to broadcast content?

What an amazing thing. You'd think they'd drop the prices a little, wouldn't you?

[HillbillyBob]

3. Greed inc takes what the taxpayer/consumer has paid for

and tries to charge us for it. Now I understand buying the enhanced content.
The internet developed from ARPAnet which was military IE paid for us by the tax payer, did we not also pay for all the opitcal net too (from taxpayer funds)?
Control the flow of information you have a captive audience like the boobtoobe tell us what to think and do?

I m sick of the rpigs piratize everything claiming private enterprise is more efficient..
I have to add...BlackWater, TSA contractors..how are those working out? mm

[liberalmike27]

52. Doesn't Surprise me that FAUX

`or any right-winger would have problems with the Internet in general.

But charging people for their programs, well, that's like them shooting themselves in the foot.

Hell, the whole reason the so many of we the liberals shifted away from television is that the Internet was the only place we could find some honest, and accurate information. Our mainstream sure isn't doing it, not even MSNBC.

I wish he'd start charging. Maybe that would just take some of the pollution away from the Internet.

[sendero]

63. +1

I think Murdoch is nuts. Want to charge for your "content", most of which is thinly disguised propaganda? Go ahead, institute an idiot tax and let the idiots pay it.

[defendandprotect]

4. Think of what we're paying for TV now -- and still nothing of value to be seen on it!!!

The internet is giving the public the ability to see that we all pretty much think alike --

that this is a liberal nation -- and to wonder why we have so much right wing control????

[GoCubsGo]

6. Psssst...Rupert...

I don't read your crappy paper now while it's free. What makes you think I would pay to read it?

[RKP5637]

21. +1000, n/t

[harun]

67. Exactly if the freeptards who eat his propaganda are dumb enough

to pay for it, so be it.

[mmonk]

7. Soon we will have to pay to pee.

Let them leave the news to bloggers then.

[pattmarty]

You must be fairly young then. I DO remember when you had to pay........

.........to pee. A lot here probably remember when you had little dime thingies on shitter doors at the train stations and some airports. I would rather stare at a shitty screen saver of Palin than PAY for content from Fox or the WSJ for that matter.

[mmonk]

15. I do remember the coin slots.

But one can find somehwere else to do it. I, like you, had rather look at a blank screen than pay for anything related to him.

[Captain Hilts]

20. Women had to pay to pee and men did not. That was often the case. nt

[pattmarty]

33. Well technically you're right. But, if you had to shit it was equal............

...........opportunity and you had BETTER HAVE CHANGE.

[truth2power]

34. I remember the pay toilets. There was always one stall

at the end of the line that was free. That was the one everybody lined up to use. }(

[unc70]

17. "Spend a penny"

or more recently "A Pound to Spend a Penny"

A very old custom of charging one to pee.

[Bluenorthwest]

18. Pay to pee. This is the theme of the musical comedy hit

Urine Town. And a great show it is, too.

[Fla Dem]

66. You already do, unless you piss outdoors. Sewer and water fees. n/t

[customerserviceguy]

9. The only reason pay sites work for the WSJ and the FT

is that some greedy little investor thinks he's going to get inside information a millisecond faster than his "competitor" investor who uses only free sites, and can pick up that stock a half a point cheaper.

I really could give a shit about finding out ten minutes faster if and when Charlie Sheen gets busted again. I would imagine that most people feel the same way about news.

Sorry, Murdoch, the toothpaste is out of the tube on this one, we're never going to pay for crap content again.

[warrior1]

11. He, like others

charge the advertisers for their ad's. Now he wants to charge the readers. Forget it. This man's greed knows no limits.

[Captain Hilts]

23. Advertising has never covered all costs. nt

[JDPriestly]

39. Precisely. Newspapers are failing because they do not speak to ordinary

people. They speak primarily to the rich.

Most people nowadays are on Facebook talking to friends and family. They watch the TV news and that is enough for them. Those of us who are primarily getting our news from the internet are either very rich and will pay or are very poor and cannot pay. So, obviously, Murdoch's scheme is to spend lots of time charging his rich cronies for the privilege of exchanging information.

If American newspapers presented the news in a way that seemed authentic and believable to ordinary, working people, they would have huge audiences. But they all present the washed up, spruced up, rich man's news. It is not credible to those of us who worry about paying the water bill.

[Captain Hilts]

43. Newspapers aren't affirming enough for people. They want affirmation, not information.Blogs

tell them what they want to hear.

[JDPriestly]

47. In addition, blogs present information in a form people can understand

on an emotional level. They give the reader the opportunity to talk back. When I disagree with an article in a printed newspaper, I have to either write a letter to the editor -- which never gets published or seen by anyone -- or just sit and fume and cancel my subscription.

So, blogs present information and opinion but the opinion is not the final opinion because the reader can look at other blogs and get other opinions and then the reader is empowered to reach his or her own opinion -- and communicate that opinion to the blogger.

Newspapers are just a thing of the past. So is a lot of the stuff on TV. People do not want to be talked at any more.

[tonysam]

55. Where do you think the blogs get their information? Most of what is "original" "reporting"

by bloggers isn't worth shit.

They NEED newspapers because newspapers have the resources to bring in content.

[Piewhacket]

12. No access to his slandersheet? Awww. The only reason to read Murdoch's lying rags....

is to denounce or mock them.

OTOH, the advertisements are useful .. if you want to know
where NOT to spend your money.

[bigtree]

13. I think the move would relegate most writers and their articles to obscurity

Right now, they have the benefit of folks reading and spreading their content. I don't understand a move to reduce your readership and exposure as a way to make the enterprise more profitable. It just may kill the golden goose.

[Capt_Nemo]

14. The fact is that the internet has made it impossible

to squeeze a profit out of broadcasting propaganda.

If I want to listen to propaganda I can always turn to People's Daily or RIA/Novosti.
Since the owners of those propaganda operations run them at a loss by design, there is no way
western media channels can continue replicating the methods
of totalitarian propaganda and, at the same time, making profits.

That is what dinossaurs like Murdoch, blinded by their greed, refuse to understand.

That is why they're on their way to extinction.

[Jim Sagle]

19. I won't pay a goddamn cent to view specific Internet content, PERIOD. End of discussion.

[The Wizard]

22. Rupert The Pirate

has outlived his usefulness along with his crap newspapers and propaganda networks. People are not looking at his trash on a grand scale when it's free. The only ones who'd pay for his bullshit are the Kool-Aid drinkers who believe Pox News and Limbaughdiots.

[phasma ex machina]

24. Machiavellian machination master Murdoch needs to get behind a pay wall post haste.

Out of sight out of mind.

[optimator]

26. lol, go for it

nobody will pay for it.

[panzerfaust]

27. After what Rupy has said about Google

... if I were Google, I would drop - today - all links to any site owned by his company.

No, I take that back, I would sue him for libel in the UK courts.

[DCKit]

28. What y'all said ^ (in spades). n/t

[WeDidIt]

29. Murdoch doesn't understand technology

If search engines cannot get to the WSJ, nobody will read or refer to anything the WSJ says.

His action is self defeating.

The stupid. It burns.

[KharmaTrain]

30. Sure Worked Well For The New York Times...

...Not :rofl:

There will be a shake-out...always is with new technology. Those who are innovative will find ways to make money. The old corporates are too big and inflexible, thus the reason they are having problems finding ways to make money out here.

[Demeter]

31. The Purchase of Internet Service Could Include "Royalties"

in the style of AASCAP dunning every restaurant in town that plays background music, websites could record the number of hits, and be paid by Aol, Comcast, etc accordingly. Of course, everybody would be treated equally, which would offend aristos like Murdock...

[TreasonousBastard]

32. When the NY Times, WAPO and others close up shop because...

people are too fucking cheap to lay out a bit of cash to read the news, where are the bloggers, Alternet, and all the other "free" sites out there going to get their content from?

(Hint-- they may not be around either, or so I gather from all the desperate appeals I'm getting every other day claiming "We're only $10,000 from our goal...")

[girl gone mad]

48. That's simply not the reason newspapers are failing.

Simple greed is the cause of their demise. Papers have long neglected their core constituency in search of greater profits.

http://agonist.org/sean_paul_kelley/20091210/provide_a_public_service_with_small_profits_or_destroy_it_with_large_ones">Here is a good summary of the real reason old media is facing impending extinction:

Call me a contrarian on this one. But I don't buy all the hype that the internet is even the primary culprit of the demise of journalism. The primary culprit is the same as it is all over the country, in every industry and in government: equity extraction.

Let me explain, in short: when executives expect unrealistic profits of 20% and higher per annum on businesses something has got to give. It's an unnatural and unsustainable growth rate. For the first ten or so years of a small to medium size company's life? Sure. But when you are 3M, or GE? Unrealistic and ultimately impossible.

So, when such rates cannot be achieved by organic growth in the business, executives start shaving off perceived fat and before they know it they're cutting off the muscle and then shaving off bone chips. And when they've gotten to the bone chips they borrow other people's money to buy new companies, load up those companies with debt and extract equity form them and then because it looks like the parent is still growing award themselves huge bonuses. It's a shell game.

That is what has happened to the news industry in America. The excessive obsession with unnaturally high profits has led to a vicious circle of cutting budgets, providing less services, which is then followed by even more drastic cuts. The local San Antonio paper is a great example of this. Twenty years ago there were two large dailies in my hometown. Both competed with each other for real scoops. Both had book reviews by local writers, providing local jobs. Both covered the local arts and sports scene. Both covered local politics in depth and local and state news in depth. Both had vigorous investigative teams. Both had bureaus in Mexico and both had offices and reporters on the ground in DC.

And then corner offices of Gannet and Harte-Hanks were populated with Kinsey-esque managers and the rout was on. Gone are the bureaus in Mexico. Today book reviews are now outsourced !for free! to bloggers via syndication. (And while it is well and good to have one's name in print, I'd submit most would like some earnings off their intellectual property, as well.) Local arts? The office in DC? Well, that's the AP, now. So, today, San Antonio has one daily that is as flimsy and tiny as the local alternative. The only real strength left with the local daily is the City Hall coverage. Everything else has been outsourced to the wire services or people writing for free. It's hardly more than thirty pages. That's a lot of wealth destruction and job loss in twenty years. And 80% of this happened before Al Gore even invented the internet. All in the name of higher industry profits--not some overwhelming fear of the world wide inter-tubes. So, who's profiting? Certainly not the intellectual vigor of the locals? And certainly not the writers who are all now 'journalism entreprenuers.' The only people who profited are the executives who obsessed over profits, to lard up their own bonus pool.

[TreasonousBastard]

49. Don't believe him. Circulation and advertising have been falling like...

rocks for years in all print media. TV and radio news haven't been doing too well, either. Opinion in a news costume is all the rage now.

Profits? There was a guy named Hearst who knew a little about how to squeeze the last nickel out of a newspaper while raising readership, but his spiritual heir Murdock is losing a bundle on his print empire while trying the same tricks.

I took the subway to work during most of the 60s through 80s and saw fewer and fewer people reading a paper as time went on. Toward the end of that period I could be the only one in the car reading a paper or magazine. The cars were neater without a dozen copies of discarded Mirror flying around, but I suspect the population was a bit less informed.

We had two local fishwraps here go belly up because they had the temerity to do some investigation and editorialize about what they found. Almost immediately all their advertising dried up because they offended some important people.

No, it's more complicated than greed in the publisher's office causing the problems.

[Moochy]

68. DAMNED NETROOTS!!!

Get off of my lawn.

[icee]

35. I have seen very little, closing in on nothing, I would pay to

view on the net. However, I understand that all things are relative. I am in my mid-sixties; much of what I see today in all forms of media I regard as wasted effort. But I understand that younger people might think such things as Housewives of Orange County, New York, Bakersfield, etc, Lady Gagga, The View are cool. I think they are point-blank stupid. I stopped watching tv, except for moments, over 25 years ago. Our culture is in a mad dash to match the decline of our country. I maintain my prediction that the US will not be around in less than 50 years.

[scentopine]

37. There is no demand for their version of the "news"

The "news" is so stilted and heavily filtered, and so protective of large corporations and their benefactors in congress that there is no demand for it.

The writing is bland, and reporters are too often simple, manipulated shills for the government or corporations in power.

When the fairness doctrine was repealed, the right wing mobilized and started buying up media and attacking the rest as "liberal".

What they created was a syrupy pablum of shitty content that has about as much appeal and depth as a chamber of commerce press release.

Now they want to charge us for this crappy propoganda?

[Greyhound]

40. K&R. As it always has been, it's the content, stupid! n/t

[fascisthunter]

41. One of a Very Powerful Fascist

using the media business to sell his propaganda. Talk about being cynical... he uses rights to kill everyone else's rights.

[havocmom]

42. Global Mega Corp, INT knows the peasants will remain hard to control

until they get their internet tubes tied. It'll happen. Then, Ted Kaczynski won't seem like such a nut case after all ;) Some corporations really are murderous tyrants out to make us nothing but cogs in their machines.

[Vidar]

45. K&R.

[EFerrari]

50. It's ironic that the Wall Street Urinal and the Fictional Times

charge for their "content".

[Turborama]

59. Yes, and what would be even more ironic would be if MSNBC, Al Jazeera English, The Guardian & BBC

became the only free mainstream news available online. I mention those 4 because they all have extensive free online video and written content (in fact, http://www.livestation.com/channels/3-al_jazeera_english">AJ English and http://www.livestation.com/channels/10-bbc_world_news_english">BBC World even broadcast live for free online). I hope Mordorch keeps on this path and doesn't realize that he'll be effectively censoring himself.

[matt819]

46. I'm beginning to think that this is not a problem

I don't have any heartburn anymore about the pay to view services. It's unlikely that every news source will move to a pay to view service, and so news sources will remain available on the internet. These may not be the services you have become used to (in my case, the NYTimes), but these services will be there. So if the Murdoch pay model works for News Corp, fine. If it doesn't, even better. I'm not going to read the WSJ in any event. Regarding the threat (promise) to remove News Corp sources from Google searches, again, that's fine. The less I have to sift through Murdoch trash, the better. And my guess is that Google will have enough access to independent news sources willing to share their links that none of us here is going to want for access to news.

Regarding the paid access for streaming video (as opposed to news), Murdoch and others have thumbed their noses at the public and threatened the application of a pay per view service. I don't have TV service and so rely on streaming video. Most of the services have managed to create a revenue stream through advertising. It's irritating, but no different from TV (even if I dream of the day of never seeing another Blackberry ad). And, frankly, if they introduce a paid access, my guess is that, like paid access for newspapers, the backlash will be substantial. And if they do introduce paid services, I just read more books. Again, not a great loss in the overall scheme of things.

I think the larger issue in the net biz is net neutrality. My fear is that an ISP will throttle back your service when you watch competing services, or that large websites will pay for priority access and speed that small businesses cannot afford. If this happens, the corporate takeover will be complete, and we're well and truly f***ed.

[Faith No More]

51. I've been off TV for some time now and it's great.

It's become just so much mindless shit I can't take it anymore. They can stick up their greedy asses for all I care.

[Imagevision]

53. This is good, Murdoch will soon discover the public pass him by and he'll be history

[lonestarnot]

60. He's 71 how long do you think private health insurance will keep him alive?

[Cleita]

69. As a naturalized American he's entitled to Medicare. Also, if by some weird

hand of fate he loses it, he's still a native born Australian and would qualify for their national health plan, something he and his minions don't want the rest of us to have.

[tonysam]

54. Well, everybody was cheering on the demise of dead tree newspapers

Did people really think they were going to continue to get something for nothing on the web?