Rupert Murdoch et al - beware
Jinfo Blog

21st September 2009

By Penny Crossland

Item

Over the course of the summer, we have posted several items on Livewire dealing with the subject of the demise of print newspapers and the move by publishers towards business models that charge for online news. (see http://www.vivavip.com/go/e22056 and http://www.vivavip.com/go/e22692) Rupert Murdoch has been particularly vociferous about the need for newspapers to move towards charging for web-based news. Just as Dow Jones announced that it was introducing mobile subscriptions for its Wall Street Journal content from the end of October (http://digbig.com/5bahgs), market research commissioned by paidContent:UK and carried out by Harris Interactive (http://digbig.com/5bahgr), contains some bad news for Murdoch and other proprietors wishing to follow him down the charging route. Their online followers are fickle: the recent poll of users of online news reveals that three-quarters would switch to an alternative free news source, if their favourite site started charging. Only 5% of online readers stated they would be prepared to pay to continue reading their favourite sites. It is very doubtful whether these numbers of readers would be enough to offset the decline in advertising revenue once a paying business model is introduced. Interestingly, young readers in the 16 to 24 year age group are more likely to pay for news from their favourite sites than the “pre middle agers” in the 35 to 44 year group. As Harris’ senior media research consultant, Andrew Freeman points out, “as long as free alternatives exist, consumers will turn to them for their daily news information”. Some industry commentors ( http://www.fsnreportersblog.com/)however have said that findings such as the Harris Research miss an important point: charging for online news can be a way of boosting print circulation for those publishers who are less worried about making money online. A valid point maybe, but net savvy readers will soon find alternative free new sources, to the detriment of traditional sources...

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