Maybe it’s the denigration of an old man stuck in an antique media showing the signs of his age, or maybe pay media is the way forward for the internet medium.
Rupert Murdoch, creator of the News Corporation (News Corp) Empire, discussed this week his plans to do two things to News Corp’s subordinate websites. One, to create a pay-wall behind which subscribers would have to pay money to read any one of the news stories on his websites. Two, to remove his websites and all their content listings from search indexers like Google and Bing.
News Corp owns, among many other Newspapers, the Wall Street Journal, and the Times (England).
Murdoch’s reasoning behind his decisions are mostly monetary based. He says to Sky News Australia, ‘no web sites anywhere in the world make serious money.’ Which is partially true, most news websites don’t make much money—but they do make some money. This system would not have worked from the beginning 10 to 15 years ago if the websites were not making money. Murdoch, in his infinite wisdom of all web-based media, counters this, ‘they [consumers and search engines] shouldn’t have had it free all the time…and I think we’ve been asleep.’
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Archive for November, 2009
The Fool Formerly Known as Rupert Murdoch
November 15th, 2009 at 10:46 pm | No Comments | Tags: content, FOX, google, hulu, news corp, pay, rupert murdoch, search engine, wall street journal, website
Overrated: FlashForward
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:02 am | No Comments | Tags: ABC, flashforward, lost, overrated, review, Show, TV
Despite being based on a novel, this TV show falls flat on its face (see Dexter for TV shows that actually do well when based on a book). Billed as the next Lost, ABC’s FlashForward seemed to have a good premise. The previews looked exciting and new. What I found though was a show particularly hard to watch. Apart from the first 20 mins of the first episode which seemed to head in the correct direction, the show began a headlong spiral into obscurity and feeble stories.
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Underrated: Modern Family
November 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 am | 1 Comment | Tags: ABC, comedy, community, modern family, NBC, Show, TV
As I watched this week’s episode of ABC’s new half hour comedy on Wednesday, Modern Family it dawned on me that this was definitively the best new show on television. The mix of comedy is both smart and calculated and of course funny. The characters are understandable, quirky likable and the storylines are interesting and usually beyond funny.
