The News Corp paywalls are coming!
As media mogul Rupert Murdoch begins to ease consumers into paying for newspaper content online, Bloomberg Businessweek's Matthew Campbell reports that he's offering a variety of “freebies” to sweeten the deal:
The Times, the London newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., is offering free tickets to Toy Story 3 or a weekend at the Grosvenor Hotel in Dorset in an effort to persuade readers to pay for news online.
The newspaper this week began closing down its free website and will charge for access, mirroring a long-standing practice at the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times Co. plans to do the same next year. Both concede the step will mean fewer readers. A drop in advertising revenue is forcing them to seek other, more steady, sources of income.
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Murdoch's News Corp., which this week offered to buy the rest of U.K. pay-TV operator British Sky Broadcasting Plc for 7. billion pounds ($11.5 billion), is pushing a business model with clients paying for content as a driver of revenue growth. He's using that same strategy at the Times and the Sunday Times. The Times is now offering paying subscribers access to free events and discounted products through its 'Times+' service in an effort to build customer loyalty.
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Still, any paywall strategy risks cutting newspapers off from an ecosystem of blogs and social media sites that was created partly by the availability of free content.
Rather than offering up movie tickets and other giveaways, I would have gone with offering consumers some straight-forward reporting based on the facts throughout all of his media outlets. Why stop with newspaper content? What about cable news? Anyone with basic cable in the U.S. pays for Fox News so why not start there? Rather than “Fair & Balanced” he could call it “Fact Checked, We Pinky Swear.”
I'm not going to hold my breath… but I am going to hold onto my credit card.
Previously: