Old dog (finally) learns new trick.
Mr. Murdoch, proving once again that the smartest people (in business or otherwise) adapt their strategies to changing conditions, seems to have decided to tear down the WSJ paywall (from the FT, quick click before the paywall goes up! oh the irony…):
Rupert Murdoch on Tuesday said he was leaning towards dropping the Wall Street Journal’s policy of charging for access to its website, saying this was “right on the front burner” of decisions to make once his $5bn takeover of Dow Jones was completed.
“That looks like the way we’re going,” Mr Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp, said at a Goldman Sachs conference in Manhattan.
News Corp’s acquisition of Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal, is expected to be completed by December, Mr Murdoch said.
Dropping the charges would follow a move this week by The New York Times to end its online subscription service, and would leave the Financial Times as one of the few large newspapers to charge for significant parts of its online content.
Mr Murdoch said he expected a cut in the Journal’s online subscription charges to result in a short-term revenue loss of about $30m, but more than that could be gained from offering the audience search services and from other online advertising to a larger audience.
Mr Murdoch said, the audience for wsj.com could grow to 10m-15m from the current 1m, giving advertisers access to an “affluent, influential” group.
I’m not very knowledgeable about the exact numbers behind online advertising, but still I’d be willing to bet that within 6 months (and probably less), their increased advertising revenues will be blowing through their historical online subscription revenues. Unless of course, he guts the editorial and reporting staff and turns it into Fox does Wall Street…
