Rupert Murdoch sticks the News of the World behind paywall
As has been widely predicted, the News of the World is to become the latest Rupert Murdoch owned newspaper to put its website behind a paywall from next month. Subscriptions will cost £1.99 per month or £1 to access the website for an individual day. A new iPad application will have a £1.19 per week charge.
Rebekah Brooks, Chief Executive of News International said: “The News of the World website will be the third of our titles to launch a paid-for digital proposition in under four months. News International is leading the industry by delivering on its commitment to develop new ways of making the business of news an economically exciting proposition.”
The paywall will be interesting on a number of counts. Although The Sun already charges for access to its iPad application, its website unlike that of The Times and the Sunday Times is free. It has been obvious for a while that some well off, professional consumers of news will be and are willing to pay to read news content online. The success of the Wall Street Journal (owned by Mr Murdoch too) and the Financial Times’s charging platform has demonstrated that high value, niche content, particularly financial content is highly monetisable. The Times as a general quality newspaper has significant online competition from free online rivals such as the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, so it has to rely on either brand loyalty or big exclusives. The News of the World has both of these qualities in abundance.
The paper is the biggest selling newspaper in the UK and week in week out, it breaks big exclusive stories, primarily in the world of celebrity, often with video related content. At the moment, readers who hear about the story either pay for the paper or can simply log on for free to read that same content and get the added benefit of the video content that accompanies it. This is hardly an incentive for people to go out and buy the paper and its losing the newspaper money.
By sticking its content behind the paywall, Murdoch is hoping that the lure of an expose of a celebrity will be enough for people to get out their credit cards. Do you think he’s right? Should subscribers have to pay twice should they also want to access the newspaper’s iPad application?
There are 3 comments on this post
The whole paywall debate is a blind alley. Newspaper circulations are falling every year – yes, the whole sector is declining.
Journalistic content – outside of the license funded BBC – and come on own up CH4 gets a slice of the license cake – is extremely expensive; many of you hacks are on the larger salaries that you like to complain about.
For News International, not charging means a slow death. And please don’t tell me that advertising funding can replace subscription. Google’s got all that money.
Any fool looking at the share price of ITV and the revolving door of CEOs can see where the whole industry is headed.
Simple answer is no. There will always be easy and free ways to access the news. Does he really believe that the sort of person interested in the gossip he’s peddling will pay for it, or even have the wherewithall to go online ?
I can’t see why there’s such a price difference between the iPad application price and the browser (online) price…? But if there is, then surely if you subscribe to the NOTW via the iPad app then you should get free access to the online pages with the same account details?
Can’t be that hard to manage…