Fernando MonteiroA Sign of the Times
March 30th 2010 17:10
Making real his old threat, Rupert Murdoch of News Corp has announced he will start charging for online content of London’s The Times and The Sunday Times. According to an article by the Telegraph of London published by the Sydney Morning Herald, last February Times Online website had 20.4 million visitors. And according to the same source, advertising revenue from the above online publications is GBP15-18 million.
We all know that advertising is moving massively and everywhere online. Online content is becoming increasingly attractive and the most direct consequence of this is that newspapers print editions will suffer in readership. Not only old style print newspapers are awkward to open and read, the online editions publish more up to date news and articles, not to mention photos, video trailers and services like the weather. And with the proliferation of electronic readers such as Apple’s iPhone and iPad and Amazon’s Kindle and others, the more that this trend will be exacerbated into the near future.
It’s all right for Mr Murdoch: News Corp produces work they want to be paid for and, especially now that print editions revenue is dwindling he needs to make his money elsewhere and that is on the online editions of his newspapers. The problem, though, is this: will he find enough online readers to sign up to his online editions which will have to pay GBP1 a day or GBP2 a week? Claire Enders, an analyst, still cited by the above source, said: “They may get 100,000 regular readers to sign up, but it’s not going to be millions, and it’s going to take years.”
If you put this together with the above figure for online advertising of GBP18 million, you would feel like asking Mr Murdoch, with such a price wall and reduced readership, how is he going to make that much advertising money? Will it impact News Corp bottom line? How long will it take to build up an online readership that would produce advertising revenue like that?
I suppose we will have to wait and see, but it’s a dilemma facing every print publisher, and in a not too far away future that will include books also, and whose answer is not easy to find. Et voilá!
We all know that advertising is moving massively and everywhere online. Online content is becoming increasingly attractive and the most direct consequence of this is that newspapers print editions will suffer in readership. Not only old style print newspapers are awkward to open and read, the online editions publish more up to date news and articles, not to mention photos, video trailers and services like the weather. And with the proliferation of electronic readers such as Apple’s iPhone and iPad and Amazon’s Kindle and others, the more that this trend will be exacerbated into the near future.
It’s all right for Mr Murdoch: News Corp produces work they want to be paid for and, especially now that print editions revenue is dwindling he needs to make his money elsewhere and that is on the online editions of his newspapers. The problem, though, is this: will he find enough online readers to sign up to his online editions which will have to pay GBP1 a day or GBP2 a week? Claire Enders, an analyst, still cited by the above source, said: “They may get 100,000 regular readers to sign up, but it’s not going to be millions, and it’s going to take years.”
If you put this together with the above figure for online advertising of GBP18 million, you would feel like asking Mr Murdoch, with such a price wall and reduced readership, how is he going to make that much advertising money? Will it impact News Corp bottom line? How long will it take to build up an online readership that would produce advertising revenue like that?
I suppose we will have to wait and see, but it’s a dilemma facing every print publisher, and in a not too far away future that will include books also, and whose answer is not easy to find. Et voilá!
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