Last week I described ABC Managing Director Mark Scott’s landmark speech as a pre-emptive strike against those who would wish us to pay for viewing news and other content. The battle between pay models and public broadcasting would be one of the main battles of the new media century, I said.
Predictably, News Limited has today returned fire in The Australian’s media section. The rhetorical return is in this piece from News Digital Media CEO Richard Freudenstein. He takes it right up to Scott with an attack on the taxpayer-pays model. All this is pretty much what one could expect.
But much more interesting is Mark Day’s column, which for the first time to my knowledge, gives us insight into how Murdoch plans to exercise his pay model. Of course the old dog (adept at learning new tricks) is not planning to simply erect a pay wall around existing offerings. This column is a return to form for Day, and essential reading for anyone who wants to take part int his debate from henceforth.
Day talks about a special “skunk works” being established in Sydney, code name 2011, operating in secret to rethink what News Limited does.
I gather the aim is to create sites that appeal to various user groups, built in the style of social networks. Some will be aimed at youth markets, others at the so-called working families, others at upmarket, culturally influenced, older audiences. Some will be defined by geography (that is, city or regionally oriented); others by specific interests.
They will be hybrid sites with open-access for all the breaking news that is currently provided free today. It won’t cost you to learn of a plane crash, a government initiative, or a sporting result.
Beyond the open pages will be a raft of services and specialised information. A clue may be taken from the launch last week of Times Plus in Britain — a site majoring in culture and travel initiatives, where subscribers to The Times and Sunday Times will have automatic access, and non-subscribers will be asked to pay pound stg. 50 ($88.65) a year to join the club. On offer are travel deals, tickets to film and theatre previews, discount book offers, cross-promotional offers for pay-TV services, upgrades on airlines, and so on. I figure it’s no coincidence that many of the offers have a listed value of pound stg. 50 — the same as the joining fee.
As well as the value-added shopping aspects of the site, there’s a blog facility for the exchange of views and other user input. It’s a virtual community designed for the typical Times reader — upmarket, well-off, older folk with the time and money to fund a peripatetic, cultural lifestyle.
Meanwhile this story gives us another insight into how Murdoch will work – by charging not only the end viewer of content, but also those who transmit it – the Googles and Yahoos among them.
More commentary on all this from me in the Crikey email today.
4 Comments
(i) “Specialised information” is done far better by others. No need to pay Murdoch if you’re paying for the FT or whatever.
(ii) Pay to belong to Murdoch’s “culture club”? Like what culture? The litcrit clique who now review books? Film or theatre reviews- there’d be a few who might pay but plenty of same online for free.
(iii) Travel? Why bother- the net is saturated with travelism. I don’t need some hack telling me annually about the wonders of Florence.
(iv) Investigative journalism? Now people would pay for that, but it’s thin and occasional in the Murdoch press. Partly because the foam-flecked commentariat monopolise its pages and budget.
(v) Commentary? What, pay money to read Bolt, Shanahan, Sheridan or Mr. Obvious (Paul Kelly)? The net is awash with opinion. It’s not as if the Murdoch stable were, umm, scintillating. They’re stale. Nursing home bores. They’re history repeating itself.
(vi) Entice subscribers by freebies/discounts? A sort of loyalty program? Jesus, it would have to be the mother of all steak-knife offers to make a diff. Aldi meets Rupert.
(vii) The “Times Plus” model? Frank exchanges of views between consenting adults? Hey, that sounds like Crikey…But how many time-rich “upmarket older folk” want to murmur in an online club? They’d prefer a real club. With booze.
This aggregation of niche “markets” or putative “social groups” is wishful thinking. If they were real markets or social groups, they’d already be “monetised”. Some have been, but not by generalist media. Australia has a staggering number of specialist magazines, and they remain fragmented in their online manifestations. They can’t be aggregated, though of course ownership could be, up to a point. But all those nickels ‘n dimes only add up to a fistful of dollars. Murdoch seems to think that he can aggregate more general interest groups. But they don’t exist in a sufficiently self-conscious or defined form. And there are endless “content” alternatives now. So Murdoch would have to create “newspapers” or zines far superior to those he has now to attract loyalty, not to mention money. Superior in depth, content, and ideological breadth. Fat chance.
This remains the classic apples and oranges argument. Two different business models The ABC has a guaranteed pipeline of funds and so can get on with doing what it is doing. More power to them; a public broadcasting option like the Beeb or Aunty should be encouraged. Slight worry in back of my head about how hard it would be to change the charter to make it more in line with Government thinking. But generally a good option Although Scott is wrong about the consumers having the power. Certainly it is more interactive but you can’t let “citizen journalists” make the running If you abrogate your authority to the masses you get women’s day. The ABC has to set agendas. Use all that public money to be a leader in quality investigate journalism. Be a credible source of quality news and information. You got to have the street cred that comes with your name Can’t imagine the Beeb just throwing the switch to vaudeville the way Scott does,. But then he never was a great thinker when it comes to the media. Just reading speeches written by someone else doesn’t make you a genius.
Then we have the struggling news organisations looking for a way to monetize (love that word) what they do. As journalists we run the danger of confusing the problems of the moguls, which is to maintain their lifestyles of high salaries and 5 star living, with our job to provide quality journalism. Good journalists can survive on the smell of an oily rag they are like Captain Willard’s Charlie “They don’t need any R & R just a little rice and a little rat meat and they are out there out there in the jungle.”
We have to find a way to keep on telling our stories. Wedding ourselves to failed business models is not the way to do it.Their future (or lack of it) is not our future. We will tell stories regardless of the platform.
There is something pathetic seeing the Murdoch’s of this world floundering around seeking help from Governments after being lectured for years about the evils of Government. I couldn’t care less if James ends up living in a cardboard box under Tower Bridge, Rupe has to go on the pension and Chris Mitchell ends up selling pencils and pens on Eddy Avenue. After being lectured for years on how we have to change to embrace the new globalization or whatever they can feel the fire being applied to the souls of their feet. We shouldn’t confuse this with journalism though.
I suspect that the willingness of quality mastheads like The Age and the SMH to go down market is what is killing them. It is a race to the bottom when they should be trying to hold the high ground. As the dust settles the winners will be the ones who have survived with their credibility and name intact. How they deliver the good words remains to be seen. Electronically? in print? … Less frequently?
The truth will merge but if you have pissed your name up against the wall in pursuit of Internet “hits” you won’t be able to play. ….
It’s obvious now that Murdoch blames the ABC and other public broadcasters for his decline into irrelevance.
I don’t want my ABC subverted by this wizened gringo or his descendants. Time to boycott these cane toads.
What I can’t understand is how the “journalists” who work for Murdoch can continue to describe themselves as such. You mentioned Caroline Overington, a Murdoch hack, sprouting the company line at the future of media conference last week.
His minions on The Australian continue to pevert the public debate by spinning stories to suit the far right opinions of their grizzled, grumpy old man constituency. The laughable manipulation of Newspoll being a case in point.
And his attack dogs on the Daily Terror and the Herald Sun will twist any story to suit their bosses’ ideological biases. In my day as a journalist, heads would have rolled over the Terror’s handling of the Ozcar beat-up.
The worst thing is that even the ABC now mindlessly follows the screwy news agenda dreamed up by the right-wing death beasts of The Australian and the other Murdoch papers. So what is the Sun King complaining about?
The best writing and most clear-eyed political analysis in this country is now coming out of the blogs – like this one and Pollytics and Lavratus Prodeo and the Piping Shrike. I have given up on mainstream media as a joke.
And Murdoch is to blame for this.
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