In terms of commercial media, 2010 was always going to be dominated by one man and one company: Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation.
From the outset we expected paywalls and bundled content offerings (Alesia) to be the order of the day, but no one could have foreseen just where we find ourselves today. Read more »
Hollywood’s take on the relentless rise of Facebook in The Social
Network is set to pass a milestone of its own this week, when UK box office
takings top £10 million.
It’s still got some way to go to push 2009 blockbuster Avatar (£90m), but
double-digit millions is good going for any film in little old Blighty.
Fiction or not, the fact that David Fincher’s simple and rather contrived plot
makes a plausible story says something about the value people place – or at
least imagine others place – on being seen to be in the right club.
The desire to be part of the right crowd is presented as the driving force
behind Facebook’s real-life founder Mark Zuckerberg, and it got me thinking
about News International’s paywall experiment. Read more »
News Corporation has been forced to abandon plans for its eagerly anticipated digital news platform, part of the company’s so called ‘Project Alesia’ initiative, citing runaway costs.
As we revealed this morning, bean-counters at Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate have decided to pull the plug on the year-long activity when it was expected to be finalised. The decision is said to be absolute: this is not a delay, or grand standing or being placed on hold; this an entire, dedicated News Corp UK operation being dismantled just days before a product was due to go to market.
Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP and one of adland’s best known soothsayers, has dramatically revised his stance on the viability of publishers charging for content online following comments from the quintessential newspaper man, Rupert Murdoch.
Speaking at an industry event in Greece last week, The Daily Telegraph reports an irrepressible Sorrell, as saying: “[Rupert] Murdoch is absolutely correct to try and get people paying for content – it is critical for traditional media businesses as there is not enough advertising to support these models anymore.
“Getting consumers to pay for content they value is key. We have to find those areas.”
Such sentiments will be music to the ears of those operating in the embattled newspaper sector, which according to Sorrell’s own media investment arm GroupM is expected to see advertising revenue plummet 26% in the UK this year. But such apparent support for online pay-walls flies in the face of Sorrell’s
own vision of the future, announced less than 10 months earlier. Read more »
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