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Barry Diller (67), chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp, has joined the chorus of media moguls like Rupert Murdoch (79), chairman and CEO of News Corp. in saying that the era of free Internet content is over.
“It is not free, and is not going to be,” said Diller at the recent Fortune conference. It’s “mythology” to view the Internet as a system of free communications, web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, said Diller. He predicted there will be three revenue streams: advertising, subscriptions and transactions.
Diller is also the chairman of Ask.com, Expedia, Ticketmaster, Match.com and several other online properties under the IAC umbrella that provide paid online services.
Rupert Murdoch, has hinted at turning the Wall Street Journal into a fully paid subscription model. News Corp and others have seen their revenues drop amid the deepening advertising slump and are see paid models as a way to increase revenue. They also blame bloggers for taking their content free and sharing it on the web for free.
Other media bosses, like Liberty Media Corp.’s John Malone and Walt Disney’s Robert Iger, the free model. Disney, is developing a subscription-based product for the Web.
“We have ample evidence both in traditional and new media that people are willing to pay for quality, to pay for choice and to pay for convenience… And they are willing to pay for what they perceive as value,” said Iger.
Image: Thanks to Scotty Bud of Kalamazoo.
Related:
Rupert Murdoch Says “Internet Will Soon Be Over”
Media czar, Rupert Murdoch, declared that the “Internet Will Soon Be Over”. The News Corp Chairman made this statement in a conference call with reporters and analysts in response to questions surrounding online news sites charging for news. Murdoch said that he envisions starting to charge fees for his online newspapers the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World within the next 12 months. Continue…
Channels: Ask.com, free, web
If their evidence that people are willing to pay was collected when people actually had money, they may be in for a rude awakening…
Comment by Troy — August 18, 2009 @ 12:55 PM
If it becomes a full subscription service people will hunt arround for a free one. Free is typically 2-3 clicks away if you don’t want to pay.
As for Bloggers using their content? All it takes is one person who has a subscription and clones it onto another website without all the subscriptions needed.
We may be seeing the last death throes of the old large media. They all seem to be shaking their fists and making big statements as if people lacked choices, or even thought their content was necessary enough that people would pay for it. Bloggers should kick into high gear at this.
Comment by Raptoreyes — August 18, 2009 @ 6:08 PM
Amen, and especially love Troy’s comment. With so many people un- or under-employed, and with ruined credit due to the government-authored mortgage meltdown, the big opportunity for current or would-be media moguls (or any entrepreneurs) is to figure out how to deliver products and services cheaply or for free. The party is indeed over, but the old moguls have the wrong party.
Comment by Susan Breidenbach — August 18, 2009 @ 8:37 PM
Give em a break, they’re old rich and stupid. You can’t take it with you, well the money anyway. The stupidity follows you to hell. The only challenging part in all this is trying to figure out why this is newsworthy.
Comment by Walt — August 19, 2009 @ 8:19 PM