Digital Trends
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp released its financial numbers for its fourth fiscal quarter of 2009 (PDF), and the results weren’t great: the company reported profits down 8 percent in 2009 compared to 2008, and Murdoch characterized the year 2009 as “the most difficult in recent history.” And what’s News Corp’s plan to stop the hemorrhaging? The company plans to lock most of its news content behind so-called “paywalls” so that only paid subscribers may access its content.
News Corp., owned by Rupert Murdoch, owns newspapers and media around the world, including the Wall Street Journal, the Times, and, of course, Fox. Yesterday, encouraged by the jump in subscriptions and the revenue that brings at WSJ, Murdoch says he’s looking at charging people to read the content at the websites of his newspapers, according to a report in the Guardian.
He said papers were undertaking an “epochal” debate about whether to charge, and added:
"That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal’s experience."
Intellectual property is important to companies, and they will prosecute people who violate it. But they’re not always right. Take what happened Scotland’s Gill and Ken Murdoch, who were accused by Atari of sharing the game Race07. As the couple, aged 54 and 66, told consumer magazine Which, they’d never played a video game in their lives.
The Murdochs received a letter giving them the option of paying around $900 in compensation or be taken to court. Gill Murdoch said:
"We do not have, and have never had, any computer game or sharing software. We did not even know what ‘peer to peer’ was until we received the letter."
A judge has ruled that a lawsuit filed in 2005 against the MySpace executives who brokered the deal to sell the social networking site to Ruper Murdoch’s News Corp. can finally go forward. The suit accuses former senior executives and directors at Intermix and VantagePoint (a venture capital backer of Intermix) of cheating MySpace shareholders out of billions in revenue by agreeing to a $580 million buyout.
U.S. District Court Federal Judge George King denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit, and the discovery process for the trial is expected to more forward shortly. The suit names former Intermix CEO Richard Rosenblatt and former President Brett Brewer, along with VantagePoint.
In comments at the annual Bear Stearns media conference in Florida, media mogul Rupert Murdoch confirmed his News Corp. will not get in the way of Microsoft’s efforts to take over Internet giant Yahoo. “We’re not going to get into a fight with Microsoft, which has a lot more money than us,” Reuters reports Murdoch told investors.
It’s the ultimate game of swap. News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch is offering MySpace, his recent high-profileacquisition, to Yahoo in exchange for 25% (some have reported 30%) ownership of the Internet giant. MySpace cost Murdoch $580 million in 2005, just as hespent $650 million for IGN, the online gaming network, giving him a commanding online presence. He also tried to buy YouTube, then snapped up Photobucket for a cool $250 million. Yahoo, on the other hand, has been looking to jump fully into the social network market after the relative failure of itsYahoo 360 venture. It reportedly made an offer for Facebook. MySpace would instantly transform it into a major player. In return, a deal with Yahoo wouldmean greater exposure for Murdoch’s traditional media companies, and expand his online presence. The possibility of the deal comes just days after the resignation of Yahoo CEO TerrySemel, at a time when co-founder Jerry Yang has taken the reins, and some have said the company needs to take a more aggressive role. Murdoch, meanwhile, has a $5 billion offer on the table tobuy the Dow Jones group, which includes the Wall Street Journal.
In an effort to make its free video charing service into a money-making operation, the industry-darling online video company YouTube announced today that will begin placing video advertisements on its site alongside text and graphical advertising already appearing on the site. According to YouTube, the first video advertising client will be Warner Music Group, which will promote Paris Hilton’s (*cough*) music album on the site via the Paris Hilton Channel, which is sponsored by Fox Broadcasting (itself part of the Murdoch media empire which includes MySpace) to promote its television drama Prison Break.
In a classic "It’s not you, it’s me, but we can still be friends" move, satellite television provider DirecTV is launching a major pre-holidays advertising campaign promoting its own digital video recorder (DVR) system to new and existing subscribers. The move is a direct blow to DVR pioneer TiVo, whose partnership with DirecTV put TiVo DVR units into the homes of more than 2 million DirecTV subscribers.
“As a company, we expect TiVo’s expanded presence in the market to lead to a robust 2004,” said Chief Executive Mike Ramsay.
The San Jose, California-based company, whose service enables users to pause and replay live TV, said new products featuring it include DVD recorders manufactured by consumer electronics makers Humax and Toshiba; a high-definition DVRs for satellite TV users; and home networking products.
TiVo also unveiled TiVo-to-Go, which lets users who also subscribe to an additional TiVo home networking service to transfer shows they have recorded on the set-top box to a home computer. The system is kept secure by a unique key-sized memory device that must be plugged into the computer when the recorded content is watched or copied.
The rumor sent TiVo’s stock down 16 percent today.
TiVo spokespeople have told reporters that they intend to continue to do business with DirecTV and for good reason. Reportedly over half of TiVo’s 800,000 subscribers come from DirecTV.
What might Rupert Murdoch and News Corp have up their sleeves? Possibly a deal with Microsoft who unsuccessfully launched a personal video recorder system named Ultimate TV. ReplayTV also has acompeting service both of which could be had by DirecTV in a way that could lower costs and or improve earnings.
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