Murdoch websites may start charging
Updated on 07 May 2009
Newspaper websites owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation are likely to begin charging readers to use them within 12 months, the tycoon said.
The current business model, in which newspapers allow access to their content online without payment and seek revenue from advertising, was "malfunctioning", Mr Murdoch said in a conference call to launch the company's quarterly earnings.
The situation at the Wall Street Journal website - owned by News Corporation and which runs a subscription service - indicated people would be prepared to pay to read newspapers online, he said.
In the UK, News Corporation owns The Sun, The Times, The Sunday Times and The News of the World, and Mr Murdoch said the company was looking at starting to charge people to use some of their websites within the next 12 months.
"That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the (Wall Street) Journal's experience," he said.
"(Newspapers) are now in the midst of an epochal debate over the value of content and it is clear that for many newspapers the current model is malfunctioning."
In the space of three weeks, 350,000 people downloaded an iPhone application allowing them to read the Journal, he said, and they would soon be "paying handsomely" for the service.
Mr Murdoch said the company was at work finding new ways of making money out of established ventures.
"All our great technological resources are being concentrated on developing new business models which will return trusted journalistic enterprises to long term profitability," he said.
Mr Murdoch said he felt the worst of the economic crisis may have passed. He added: "I'm not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weathermen look good, but it's increasingly clear that the worst is over."
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