News Corp subscriptions

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp will unveil what they described as an “innovative subscription model” next month. During the Q3 earnings call yesterday it was also announced that the group made revenues of $8.8 billion. Murdoch said the the group has been speaking with a broad base of potential partners.

One caller asked if there would be charges for charge for entertainment as well as news (clearly bearing in mind the imminent launch of the Times' paid-for-content model) , the response was affirmative.

Murdoch went on, “Everybody’s been negotiating with Apple about television shows, films - we do VOD, everything’s on there.”

So, will the new offer be be a competitor to iTunes Store, utilising News Corp's Hulu TV? We'll have to wait and see - watch this space.

Murdoch's approach to building a broad, cross-media empire is starting to make sense. As I've noted in earlier posts the time ripe to re-architect his various interests to take advantage of the synergies it offers.

We know that the Times websites will cost £1 a day, £2 a week or free with a print subscription from June, thoug details on the latter bundle are hard to come by.

Perhaps, as I've always maintained, Times Online could charge subs along with a BSkyB satellite TV subscription . . . Why stop there? Other News Corp offerings - say, movie tickets or previews - are just as likely in my view.

In a universe where content is king, and where News Corp controls a large proportion of the means of its production, it wouldn't suprise me if we are seeing the makings of the largest cross-border integrated paid-for-content model yet.

Paid-for content: Why it may not work

A salutary lesson in what people really are prepared to pay for online has come my way from Nielsen.

In summary, consumers are most likely to fork out cash for online movies, music and games rather than socially created content or communities or existing free news content tha is repackaged. Seemingly, consumers are also more likely to pay for online theatrical releases, music and games - in short, things they already pay for. The Nielsen survey consulted 27,000 consumers across 52 countries.

• 85% prefer that free content remain free
• 79% would stop using a web site that charges them, especially if they can find the same information at no cost
• 78% believe they should be able to use newspaper/magazine web site content free if they are offline subscribers
• 71% of global consumers say online content will have to offer considerably more value than that which is freely available before they will pay
• 64% of those surveyed believe that if they must pay for content online, there should be no ads
• 62% agree that once they purchase content, it should be theirs to copy or share as they choose
• 47% of respondents are willing to accept more advertising to subsidise free content
• 43% say an easy payment method would make them more likely to buy content online

The consumers surveyed remain ambivalent about whether the quality of online content would suffer if companies could not charge for it.

Forrester research seems to bear out the Nielsen findings too.

Forrester Research presentation at paidContent 2010

Here is some more food for thought from Nielsen research into paid-for-content.