Murdoch: Newspapers will need to charge for content online

Rupert Murdoch predicts that newspaper publishers will have to charge for online content due to the lack of revenue generated by the current free model and the advertising downturn.

Murdoch said: “Nobody is making money with free content on the web, except search. People are used to reading everything on the net for free and that’s going to have to change.”

With reference the New York Times, a competitor of New’s Corp’s Wall Street Journal, Murdoch said, “The inventory of advertising on the web is doubling every year. They’re never going to make money on an advertising model to replace what they’re losing.”

Murdoch’s comments dovetail nicely with the comments made at MediaTel Group’s ‘Future of National Newspapers seminar last year by NI’s trading director Dominic Carter: “The reality is that we are learning all the time how better to monetise our online inventory.

“At the moment, are we as profitable as we’d like? No. Are we learning how to make more money out of our consumers? Absolutely. It’s a question of not just looking at advertising but looking at revenues and looking at what consumers are prepared to pay for.”