MURDOCH'S BIG GAMBLE: WE'LL CHARGE FOR ALL OUR NEWS SITES!

http://drudgereport.com/ ^ | 08/05/09 | Drudge

[markedmannerf]

MURDOCH: 'WE PLAN TO CHARGE FOR ALL OF OUR NEWS SITES'...

'WE WILL START CHARGING FOR FOXNEWS.COM'...

Q. WILL YOU SHUT DOWN ANY OF YOUR NEWSPAPERS?'

A. 'ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE... BUT NO PLANS FOR IT'

FOXNEWS PROFIT 50% HIGHER THAN LAST YEAR...

VERY HIGH EXPECTATIONS FOR NEW JAMES CAMERON FILM...

[listenhillary]

Bye Bye

[markedmannerf]

Link to story now: http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/News-Corp-to-charge-for-all-news-websites-pd20090806-UMS5P?OpenDocument

[Dallas59]

Sorry...0Buma took all my money...Guess I won’t be watching FOX anymore.

[jennyjenny]

That site is awful anyway. It’s not worth the hassle even when it’s free.

[markedmannerf]

This is ridiculous!

[Drill Thrawl]

No loss there. I don’t much like that site anyway.

[SoDak]

If I were in a position to charge people for access to my page I would. Viva la Capitalism.

[OldNavyVet]

What about the chattering masses?

Is it ... “Let them eat cake”?

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Go for it Rupert!

New York Times went down that road...for a while.

[Vaquero]

I only watch FNC on cable tv...not the PC.

[DGHoodini]

...Good luck with that....

Personally, I think you’re going to lose much more than you will gain, Mr Murdock.

[listenhillary]

I was saying bye bye to news sites that require payment.

[discostu]

They’ve got one of the most poorly designed and generally useless websites in the world. Nobody is going to pay for that.

[rom]

Bwahahaha! The Fox News website is atrocious. I don’t go there right now even though it is free.

[Domandred]

Bye bye Foxnews.com. Too bad.

[pillut48]

[watch CJ turn to FR for 100% of her news UNLESS Jim Thompson decides to start charging a fee!!!]

[PhiKapMom]

I seldom visit the Fox News site and can guarantee Murdoch that I will never visit it again.

[KansasCanadian]

The WSJ is less than half of it’s original size since Murdock’s takeover. I bet the paperboys are having trouble even tossing that thing on a windy day...

[markedmannerf]

They already charge for there radio podcasts. Isnt that enough? http://www.foxnewsradio.com/2008/12/29/free-premium-podcasts/#channel

[Red in Blue PA]

If I were in a position to charge people for access to my page I would. Viva la Capitalism.

We're already paying to go there....through ADS!

[Red in Blue PA]

Compare to CNN and many others, their website is horribly designed. They should fix it up before even THINKING about charging people money.

Adios Foxnews, if you follow through with this idea.

[Leo Farnsworth]

All major web sites generate profit (or at least revenue) by selling advertising. If fox planning to significantly REDUCE this revenue?

[netmilsmom]

I like this site

http://conservativeamericannews.com/

[SoDak]

If the market will bear an access charge, in addition to ads, he’ll make money. If it doesn’t, he won’t, and it will be short-lived. I applaud the shameless pursuit of cash.

[OldDeckHand]

"That site is awful anyway. It’s not worth the hassle even when it’s free."

Worth repeating. That site is awful. It looks like it was created in a adult-education HTML class. It's dreadful.

[fso301]

I think his plan is to use micropayments. An individual article might cost a penny. It will be interesting to see how it works.

[RanGreHad]

Amen to that.

[Dallas59]

[parsifal]

Thats something we agree on. If I have to put up with the stupid ads, I sure ain’t paying for the privilege of dancing monkeys and netflix ads rolling across my page.

parsy.

[rwfromkansas]

Until all news sites start charging, this just won’t work.

Too many abilities for people to watch the free sites.

[WellyP]

I live in S. America and listen to FOX News Talk most of the time. It is my only access to conservative English language talk radio. (I never listen to Colmes) I agree that the website totally sucks!

[rigelkentaurus]

they have websites, didn’t know that

[Future Snake Eater]

This is what ads are for. If you can attract a lot of traffic to your site, you can charge a lot for ads. This will all but kill foxnews.com which sucks anyway.

[Arkinsaw]

lol...we’ll see how that works out.

[Red in Blue PA]

I applaud the shameless pursuit of cash.

Well good for you.

Doing this in a terrible economy when people are hurting and they are already making money from ads runs me the wrong way....and I probably am not the only one.

[SaveTheChief]

Considering the front page of FoxNews.com, and that they seem to be mostly concerned with keeping up on the sexual activities of young starlets and other Hollywood bimbos, I won’t consider this a big loss.

[NotSoModerate]

Real smart /s

[Jaidyn]

The local paper started charging, and lost a lot of readers. I don’t mind paying for a few sites, but when all of them start charging, that could run into big bucks, and a lot of good forums would have to close. Maybe that’s part of the reason?

[nhwingut]

FOXNEWS.com blows. It’s a bunch of recycled AP wire stories. Good luck there, Rup.

[markedmannerf]

Considering the front page of FoxNews.com, and that they seem to be mostly concerned with keeping up on the sexual activities of young starlets and other Hollywood bimbos, I won’t consider this a big loss. Ive noticed this as well. Good to see they focus on the important news.

[TomGuy]

FoxNews websites are atrocious.

FoxNews likes graphics.

They spatter them all over the TV screen. I recently got HD cable. The FoxNews HD channel has graphics top, bottom, left and right. FoxNews actually looks better on the old SD TV. FoxBusiness HD is even worse with graphics all over it.

They spatter graphics all over their web pages. Even on highspeed cable, it takes forever for the FoxNews/FoxNation websites to load.

I can't get videos from FoxNews to load most of the time.

Charge for it?

[Soothesayer9]

“If the market will bear an access charge, in addition to ads, he’ll make money. If it doesn’t, he won’t, and it will be short-lived. I applaud the shameless pursuit of cash.”

And apparently the shameless pursuit of lawsuits. Because you can bet the farm that there will be plenty of those by him when bloogers/writers quote “his” news stories.

[freekitty]

I won’t be reading it either.

[arthurus]

It will likely severely shrink their readership therefore reducing the rates they can charge for advertising. It is an experiment but not a new one. Such tests have ended negatively before. Why does Murdoch think the same experiment will end differently this time?

[prairiebreeze]

So, Murdoch wants people to pay to read about the latest Hollywood celebrity scandal or dead white girl investigation?

Good luck with that Rupert, I don’t listen to your cable network anymore because the content is so crappy.

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

“It is my only access to conservative English language talk radio”

many radio stations are webcast live and/or later rebroadcasts of almost any conservative talker you could wish for

[mkjessup]

Screw you Murdoch, FoxNews.Com hasn’t GOT anything worth charging for!

[mass55th]

No big deal. I never go to the Fox News website anyway, and after their coverage of this last election, I rarely watch Fox News on cable anymore.

[1000 silverlings]

lol, lol, yep that’s gonna work, lol