ADELAIDE, Australia - News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said Tuesday he intends to make access to The Wall Street Journal's website free, dropping subscription fees in exchange for anticipated ad revenue.
"We are studying it and we expect to make that free, and instead of having one million (subscribers), having at least 10 million to 15 million in every corner of the earth," Murdoch said.
News Corp. has agreed to acquire Dow Jones & Co. for about $5 billion, and the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter. A special shareholders meeting is scheduled for Dec. 13 in New York.
Murdoch said he believes that a free model, with increased readership for wsj.com, will attract "large numbers" of big-spending advertisers.
The website, one of the few news sites globally to successfully introduce a subscription model, has around one million subscribers, generating about $50 million in fees.
If the Journal's website goes free, that would leave Consumer Reports magazine with one of the largest remaining paid subscriber bases among media outlets on the Internet.
ConsumerReports.org has nearly three million paying users, and charges $26 a year, with discounts available to subscribers to the print magazine.
The Journal's website lists a charge of $79 a year for full online access for customers who don't also subscribe to the print version of the paper.
In September, The New York Times abandoned a two-year-old effort to charge for certain premium material on its website, concluding that it would be better off opening the site to all users in a bid to increase online advertising.
Last month Britain's Financial Times, owned by Pearson PLC, said it would expand free access to FT.com but wouldn't entirely give up on charging fees for unlimited use of the site.
Other media outlets also tried to charge fees for access to their websites in the early years of the Internet, but most abandoned the strategy, particularly after online advertising spending began to grow.
Murdoch, speaking to shareholders in Adelaide, where he built his company from one newspaper he inherited from his father, said that the current quarter is coming in ahead of full-year guidance. U.S. advertising demand has held up well despite problems in the U.S. credit market, he said.
He said it was too early, however, to raise forecasts for the year and reiterated guidance for operating income growth in the low double digits.
Around 23 per cent of News Corp.'s earnings come from the United States. Murdoch said it wouldn't be "fatal" to see a 10 per cent drop in advertising in the U.S. market because of the ramifications of the subprime mortgage market meltdown.
More Arts Headlines »
- Border cops, hockey wives highlight CBC winter season
- CBC Television is heating up its winter lineup with a gritty drama about immigration police and a steamy series about the women in the lives of hockey players.
- National Ballet's Nutcracker to be simulcast in cinemas
- The National Ballet of Canada is bringing a high-definition version of its holiday classic, The Nutcracker, to Canadian cinema audiences next month.
- Neil Diamond reveals it was 'Sweet Caroline' Kennedy
- Singer-songwriter Neil Diamond kept it secret for decades, but he has finally revealed that former U.S. president John F. Kennedy's daughter was the inspiration for his smash hit Sweet Caroline.
- Slice TV network adds new Canadian reality shows
- Canadian reality shows will dominate the schedule on the Slice TV network in winter 2008.
- 70 years of Met opera made available online
- New York's Metropolitan Opera has made 100 famous operas from its back catalogue available online through the digital music service Rhapsody.
