Rupert Murdoch is half right

I’m glad to see Rupert Murdoch come out so strongly against government intervention in the media. Some lawmakers have suggested that the media might need government assistance due to the effect of the internet on the changing industry. One idea involved converting newspapers to nonprofit organizations. Murdoch is right to criticize these types of ideas, along with regulations which prevent companies from owning newspapers and TV stations in the same market. It’s funny how government hampers competition, then offers a bailout of sorts.

Besides government intervention, Murdoch once again commented on the future on online media. Specifically mentioning the “theft” of material by aggregators, and the failure of the current business mode. Murdoch has recently stated his intention to move to a subscription service, and there have been rumors about removing Newscorp’s sites from Google and providing exclusive access to Bing (for a price, of course). For as right as Rupert Murdoch is on government intervention, he is wrong about his ideas for the future of media.

News Corp would certainly be able to sell subscriptions to its service, but how many? Their readership would drop precipitously and migrate directly to their free competition. Fox Business News is great, but why would I pay for that site if I can go to Bloomberg for free? As long as one strong site is free, they will pick up a trememdous amount of traffic and undercut the sites that charge for subcriptions. I would also be willing to bet that the free site’s ad revenue would rise tremendously.