The Murdoch family has caused a great stir in the media industry hit with a series of comments and actions that suggest that the industry's future through charging readers for the news you read online.
Directors of media around the world, tired of losing the battle against falling advertising revenues, they cling to the hope that his old rival, internet, lead the way back to profitability.
For now nobody wants to be the first to start charging for content and face the inevitable loss of readers to rivals that still give free information.
And any agreement between publishers to charge a risk to be considered anticompetitive.
Who see Rupert Murdoch as a potential savior of the industry should be aware that his media empire, News Corp, has a unique strength.
Murdoch's businesses, including British satellite network BSkyB, quite easily could charge extra money by combining online news to television and broadband packages it sells. Moreover, already in place a mechanism to pay premium content.
Others start from a weaker position, as the British Independent, who in his Web site reproduces the printed version complete with videos. The newspaper readership would suffer a loss if they simply started charging for it.
"There'sa lot of 'me too' on the fly.
Most news editors can finally conclude that charge for content online is not an option, and seek to increase their income through more specific advertising or subscription programs that provide supplements.
Using alternative distribution platforms such as mobile phones, a strategy already successful in Japan and China, is another option.
Advertising revenues in the global newspaper industry record highs in 2007.
And while the rest of the information industry won 70 percent of its revenues from online business in 2008, that portion in the news sector was only 11 percent, according to a recent report from Outsell.
"While the presses are disappearing from the industry-six bankruptcies and massive cuts products and jobs-remains dependent on the income of printing. The news segment is emerging as the long delay of the information industry" , the report said.
It is perhaps this scenario that led to News Corp, the largest provider of world news, thinking about a change.
Murdoch suggested that would put an internet payment service hoping to attract more advertising revenue by adding more readers. Then he reconsidered.
Last month, Murdoch said News Corp could charge for access to their news sites since mid-2010.
Two weeks later, News Corp announced the closure of its debt free newspaper thelondonpaper and London last weekend, Murdoch's son James, who runs News Corp in Europe and Asia, attacked the BBC for providing "lots of news Government-sponsored free.
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