I often wondered what would be wrong with Rupert Murdoch. And I don’t mean that fact that the mother of his 6 year old youngest kid is ten years younger than his firstborn. I wonder why somebody who is worth billions can not think of anything better than to go to work.
Running an almost proverbial media empire is probably not a smooth way to spend a day. News Corp announced their ‘numbers’ a couple of days ago.
They had to correct a couple of billions in ‘Good Will’ that they had previously on the books.
Following suit is now the plan to charge for content. It does not take sybillic powers to see that this will fail royally. Allot of News Corps page views are based on content that is -let’s say- somewhat shallow. There is no shortage of that on the net. I doubt people ever will pay for that.
And content that might be worth paying for is already non-free. The problem with that is that I rather pick up the WSJ in paper and enjoy the resolution, large display size and fast and easy navigation than to sign up for some thing with an existing media company. Not that paying for content would be bad. The problem is that so far no media company has managed to create a system that works well enough for me to pay for.
I don’t think that Rupert Murdoch will try his pay systems himself and enter his credit into the form that his IT mignons will drum up for this.