News Corp Plan to Charge to Access Online News Websites Like Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph
For a really smart guy, Rupert Murdoch has allowed himself to be sucked in to one of the stupidest ideas in the history of stupid. Did i say stupid?
Facing a massive exodus away from classified newspaper advertising, Murdoch and his News Corp publishing house have decided that they will charge for online access to their newspaper sites. He believes that this access charge will allow them to recoup reducing revenues and provide a better quality of journalism.
He may be right on the latter. But an access charge wont recoup any revenue if people choose not to sign up. Because what News Corp just don't get is that people wont pay for online news. Its been a free model ever since the internet began. Changing the structure now will only see people go elsewhere for their daily news fix.
Its kind of like the boffins at the top of News Corp just don't understand how the internet advertising game works. Drag people to your site, and advertisers will pay. Either cost per impression or cost per click. That's fairly simple.
Less page hits means less advertising impressions and lower click throughs. Simple really when you think about it. So it means that they are willing to sacrifice their online advertising revenue in the belief that the online access charge will compensate them. The truth is, it wont.
One of the newspapers that does charge for access is the Wall Street Journal. Apparently News Corp are basing much of their "charge theory" on this successful online newspaper. But the Wall Street Journal is for a niche market. Its the same locally, with the Australian Financial Review. Access to the main paper is by fee only. People in financial circles are happy to pay. In most cases, its business access anyway.
But could you imagine people actually paying to access a Herald Sun story about politician's perks, or a Daily Telegraph exclusive on a missing dog? Why would they, when there are so many other sources of news online?
In fact there is so much information available on the internet, that there aren't enough hours in the day to read everything you might like. So why would you pay for it, when you can just look at something else? People aren't desperate to read about the lost dog or a politician's new car. They are doing it because it is there, but wont pay money for it.
In the early days of the Internet, many newspapers actually required that you log in to read their site. The Age tried it in the late 1990's, after having already offered free access since coming online. It didn't last long. In fact most newspapers around the world have dropped this model. Its a detractor and the decrease in traffic was evident. Charging for access will have an even worse effect.
But there are benefits to this decision by News Corp. Its good for other news, blogs and commentary sites, just like this one. Because we don't charge. And with Pay and Commercial TV, Radio, Twitter, and other blog sites, we have plenty of access to up to the minute news anyway. So for people avoiding News Limited sites, it will mean more hits for us.
Oh yeah, and there is one other minor benefit. It means that Andrew Bolt probably wouldn't be able to claim one million hits a month to his Herald Sun blog. Charge for access and it might be more like 10,000 a month.
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