Murdoch: Paid-content bell cow for 2010

Do you hear that clanging here in the wee hours of the new year? That sound is coming from the bell cow for paid content, Rupert Murdoch.

I wasn’t surprised to wake up this morning to news that Murdoch’s News Corp. and Time Warner Cable have extended their negotiations over retransmission fees for Fox Network programming that could have resulted in the yanking of Fox from several Time Warner systems as of last midnight. Fox wants somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 per subscriber for carriage. The cable company wants to pay much less.

Murdoch has been quite vocal in the past few months about a need to change the revenue paradigm for media. The high-profile bickering over the retransmission issue is just one of three areas in which Murdoch seems to be leading the charge to charge (or charge more) for content.

In addition to demanding more for retransmission of his television content, Murdoch has telegraphed forthcoming pay walls going up on the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and other publications in his stable. And he’s threatened to block Google and other aggregators from access to New Corp. content, while exploring a possible exclusive arrangement with Microsoft’s Bing search tool.

If it was anyone other than Murdoch carrying the flag for this campaign, it might be easy to dismiss the efforts. But he seems willing to dig in and he’s also efforting to enlist others. In early December his Wall Street Journal ran an op/ed piece adapted from comments Murdoch made to the Federal Trade Commission. Here’s a link to the column. I’d recommend you read it now, while you can still do so free of charge.

MediaNews to test pay walls at two papers

MediaNews Group announced that it will put up partial pay walls at its York, Pa. and Chico, Ca. newspapers in early 2010.

MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton told Editor & Publisher that while the company doesn't think that putting all content behind a pay wall works, he wants to condition readers that they will have to pay for some things.

Exact dates, fees, and what content will go behind the wall has not been announced.

Just last week, figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Daily Record showed the biggest print circulation increase among newspapers nationwide with a paid circulation of more than 50,000, rising 16.5 percent to 55,370.

Newsday.com moves to subscriber model

Long Island's Newsday announced today that beginning October 28 it will begin charging a $5 weekly fee for access to most of its online content. Subscribers to the print product or to the Optimum Online service offered by the paper's owner, Cablevision Systems, will still have unlimited free access to newsday.com.

Some content, including classifieds, obituaries, weather and entertainment listings, will remain available to nonpaying readers.

Paid content on minds at Communicopia

At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia XVIII Conference in New York on Tuesday, News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch discussed possible moves toward monetizing access to two of the content properties with which he's involved.

Murdoch said that within a few months, the Wall Street Journal will begin charging for access via Blackberry, iPhone and other mobile devices. Mobile-only access will cost $2 per week, while WSJ print subscribers would pay a weekly fee of $1.

Murdoch, along with NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, said he is also looking at charging a subscription fee for the online video venture, Hulu. That strategy is less well conceived at this point, but Murdoch said that both subscription and pay-per-view models are on the table at this point.

Star Tribune to charge for Vikings content

As any major-market newspaper exec knows, few things move the online audience needle like NFL football. And that’s especially true when you’ve got a team many are picking to go to the Super Bowl. With that stage set, the Minneapolis Star Tribune is making a move to return a chunk of its Vikings coverage behind a pay wall.

MinnPost.com is reporting that the Strib will move some, but not all, of its content behind a pay wall "in a few weeks."

Other major markets - most notably Dallas - have made similar moves in the past. And it’s not the first time the Strib has done this. A simliar initiative in 2002 was deemed a failure after about 1,000 subscribers paid $30 each for coverage of a team that stumbled to a 6-10 record.

This time, though, the Strib is taking a more cautious approach. Only a portion of the Vikings content will be part of the premium package, which will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a cup of good coffee. That way they can still use their base coverage to lure readers to the site, while using the premium coverage to generate revenue.

In recent years the NFL has placed heavier restrictions on the access to and use of its content by media outlets. If the Strib’s venture with paid-access to Vikings coverage proves successful, it will be interesting to watch the league’s reaction to see if they become even stingier with their product.