What do supermarket tabloids, sports, topless women, the Bible, religious zeal, and political intrigue all have in common? They sell like hotcakes. And the hotcake vendor is Rupert Murdoch.
Rupert Murdoch, Australian-born media tycoon, owns News Corp and a host of subsidiaries. He oversees and operates the vast majority of media outlets in Great Britain (News of the World, The Times of London, The Sun), Austral-Asia (The Australian, News Limited, The Perth Sunday Times) and Italy (Sky Italia).
Murdoch thrives on the news industry, and in these days of digital news updates and free online news browsing, fewer people are purchasing printed papers. To overcome the loss of revenue, Murdoch intends to start charging his online audience to read the respected London papers The Times and Sunday Times. If his paywall effort works, it may lead a trend toward charging readers for online news. On the other hand, if The Times' faithful readers just go elsewhere, news outlets will have to find other ways to generate revenue. The thing most people want to avoid is a government bailout (read takeover) of major media corporations.
Murdoch's plan has its critics. Adrian Drury of BusinessWorld writes, "The inherent risk in The Times' strategy is that timesonline.co.uk stops becoming a destination for web audiences, costing News Corp a critical marketing channel. Others have made the mistake of placing their most popular content behind the pay-wall and have seen traffic to their sites (and hence their ability to convert users to a paid relationship) collapse."
The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal have both successfully implemented paywalls, but they also write for specific niche audiences. Murdoch is betting that his readers will want to read The Times enough to pay a couple pounds per week for the privilege.
Who Is Rupert Murdoch?
Keith Rupert Murdoch was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1931 to Sir Keith Murdoch, a respected journalist and managing director of Australia’s newspaper publisher News Limited. As a young man Rupert Murdoch began to buy up provincial and suburban newspapers throughout Western Australia. Murdoch has been gaining massive television and publication power here in the US over the past twenty-five years through Fox Entertainment Group, Twentieth Century Fox, and The New York Post, and is now poised now to do the same in China with Star TV.
In 1983, an estimated 50 corporations were responsible for the majority of world media. As of 2002, only nine were left, and eventually, Murdoch suggests, there will be perhaps three corporations dominating the world's media; News Corp will be one of them.
Under News Corp, Murdoch now owns or has controlling shares in Triangle Publishing (which includes TV Guide), MySpace.com, belief.net, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard magazine, The National Star, Fox Sports Net, HarperCollins Publishing, Hughes Electronics/ DirecTV, and hulu.com.
If his paywall for The Times works, Murdoch may continue to charge for access to his other online news outlets.
Mixed Media
Murdoch advertises himself as a Libertarian, but it is difficult to know Murdoch's personal religious, political, or ethical values based solely on the products he provides to the public. Taken as a whole, his various media outlets are often at odds with each other in the images they present, sending mixed and contradictory messages.
On one hand, Murdoch cultivated Great Britain's The Sun and The Daily Star, with their topless Page Three Girls, to infamy in the 1970's, and, on the other hand, he owns a controlling interest in evangelical book publisher Zondervan. While Fox News stories depict global warming as a hoax perpetrated on the public, Fox Entertainment Group, including the Fox Network, recently touted its "go green" campaign "0 by 2010" with the goal of reaching carbon neutral production practices for popular TV series such as the recently ended "24."
Mr. Murdoch seems to have built his kingdom on sensationalism: sex, violence, sports, war, even political and religious fervor. In other words, he is a classic capitalist; he sells what audiences want to buy.
Murdoch is an object of fear and scorn by many in the intellectual elite of Europe, especially in Great Britain where he is not a citizen yet holds great sway over news publications. Mr. Murdoch seems to pick his politicians the way he picks his news stories and television programs- by public appeal, depending on the latest trend.
He's used his TV news and publications to back various politicians in their bids for office. He openly supported George W. Bush and the war with Iraq, hosted a 2006 fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, and said of Barack Obama, with whom he held a private meeting in 2008, "He is a rock star. It's fantastic. I love what he is saying about education... he will win in Ohio and the election. I am anxious to meet him. I want to see if he will walk the walk."
Perhaps the benefit of being a Libertarian is the freedom to bounce around between affiliations and candidates. Though he is purportedly Catholic, and even holds a medal of knighthood from the Catholic Church, some journalistic voices cry out that perhaps Murdoch's religion is "Mammonism," and his political message is "Murdochracy."
No Government Bailouts:
What Murdoch does not want to see, and rightly so, is a government takeover of the news industry. He said recently:
The growing drumbeat for government assistance for newspapers is as alarming as overregulation. One idea gaining in popularity is providing taxpayer funds for journalists or giving newspapers "nonprofit" status - in exchange, of course, for papers giving up their right to endorse political candidates. The most damning problem with government "help" is what we saw with the bailout of the U.S. auto industry: Help props up those who are producing things that customers do not want. The prospect of the U.S. government becoming directly involved in commercial journalism ought to be chilling for anyone who cares about freedom of speech.
Murdoch's paywall idea may be just another way to pinch pennies from the pockets of his audiences. On the other hand, perhaps Murdoch is looking at another way to keep news free from government interference.
Related Links:
• News Corp Builds The Wrong Pay-Wall - BusinessWorld Online