murdoch.jpg: Paste this image in your site, Myspace, Facebook, Ebay copy this code...
 Rupert Murdoch drops by the D conference, well-attended by many of his employees. No surprise: He now owns the conference itself.
Rupe is casual in a sweater/open-shirt combo. Glasses look vaugely tinted.
Will papers survive? I hope so. But they'll have to do it themselves. But deterioration of newspapers is a huge opportunity for the WSJ. Huge opportunity to service the top 10% of the most affluent, most influential, etc. Business still mostly print, but more and more transfering to the Web. Lots of free commodity stuff, but we'll still charge for premium content. "Very, very valuable."
You changed your mind on that, right? "When I saw how much money was involved," yes, I did. 1.1 M subs paying $100 a year, and I think they should pay $150. It has value. Rich people in Florida love it. They have to read it. "They have nothing else to do."
We can definitely extract much more for our content than we're getting. We have 2,000 excellent journalists, and we have to be able to get more money for their work.
Journal copy touched or edited by 8.3 people. "That's ridiculous". Stories get too long, and people don't have time for it. Can do it in half the space. Walt's column, though - that's perfect.
Average WSJ sub brings us $125 a year. NYT closer to $500. There's a lot of room for us to grow.
Journal aiming at NYT, getting broader. Worried about diluting the brand? I think it can be better in finance, and it will be. But we will add to that general and international news. People don't understand: It's important for businessmen to know what's going on in the world. DC buro doing a good job, but we have to other buros contributing -- we have to cover major national news, and international news.
I think we'll take share from NYT "right away -- it will happen over several months." Then NYT will react.
Onto online stuff. Explain why you picked MySpace all the way back in 2005. "We came to it late. We decided we had to get on the Web in a major way." We did the deal in a weekend (true - check the S1)
Rupe's take on MSFT/YHOO: "I'm mystified. I can't understand the whole thing." I understand aspects. Jerry Yang's a friend, and we all admire him, and I get the emotional attachement. But he only owns 5%. And all the shareholders wanted to sell. and MSFT -- they're not used to buying big things.
What would you have done? What Barry Diller said: Pay a premium, and leave it there. They'll come to you.
So what will happen? It wouldn't surprise me if Yahoo does Google deal. But there's DOJ risk. It would be very sad if they did it, and the deal got hung up for a year while Google continues to eat their lunch.
What would you do if you were Ballmer? I'd get on with it - re-offer $33, $34 and say that's it. If it's complicated we can clean it up later. Icahn? Wouldn't worry about it. From Microsoft's view that's a helpful bit of noise.
What's your role in this? Yes, we've talked to them (Yahoo). There was a possiblity at one time that we'd put in MySpace into a separate company (Trafficco), but that's gone away. We're a media company. Lots of people in Silicon Valley that say they're a technology company, but we're not.
Back to MySpace: Facebook has been darling of tech media. You don't hear so much about MySpace. So wtf? Well, you do hear a lot about MySpace -- we had hit a cold patch but in last six months we've developed tremendously. But we're huge, and still expanding internationally. In this country we're 2x bigger than FB, etc etc. Repeats standard metrics. I'm not against Facebook. They've done a great job. But it's different.
Did you consider buying Bebo? Not at that price. What price? Hmmm. It was a year ago. Things move pretty fast.
How do you expand MySpace brand outside the US? We've had no difficulty in Britain, Germany, France, etc. There's so many places to go: India, Eastern Europe, etc.
Do you use MySpace personally? No.
TV: Explain rationale for Hulu. Walt thinks it's thin on content. "I think you're right" but we're adding more. "As far as we were concerned, we wanted to control our own copyrights. And we thought this was a pretty good way to do it."
Will TV go away? No. "Television will be absolutely central." People will want to watch shows on a big screen TV. But we want to monetize and control distribution as much as possible.
So why didn't you sue YouTube? Plenty of pirated stuff there. "All the time." Simpsons are all over it. "We had mixed feelings about it, but when it came down to it, we figured it was doing more to promote our shows than it was to hurt them" (scattered applause).
What's future of movie distribution: Traditional outlets or Web? "I'd love to see all the windows closed" so released in all formats same time. But entrenched interests, like movie theaters. But we're moving it up all the time. "Every movie studio wants to close the windows as far as possible." Would you experiment with a day-and-date release via a PC? Maybe. But skeptical. Walt's really selling this, but Rupe's not really interested.
Social network advertising: Why is Google complaining about MySpace ads? They're complaining to cover up other problems. At FIM, we're going to miss our number this year by 10%. That's $900 million. No other company on the Internet has grown the way we have. It's a new medium, still experimenting. A long way to go. "It's coming. But it's an educational process. It's an experimental process. It's something new."
So... still getting along with Google? "I think they're fantastic. But you don't want anybody to be a monopoly." Ballmer's right to try to engage them and get in their own game and see if he can damage them there.
What would you do if you were Yahoo? How do you compete with Google? They made a "fatal mistake" by sitting on Overture. They have a "huge job ahead of them just to hold onto their 20%. I wish them luck." And MSFT? "How can they build on their 8 or 9%? I don't know."
Read 5 times
| 
Hello, Guest
Online: 161 visitors
By Silicon
+ fotos
We love listening to Rupert Murdoch talk, mostly because Rupert Murdoch loves to talk. But perhaps because we're professional Rupe-watchers, we've heard a lot of what he had to say about N [..] 
Rupert Murdoch: Billionaire, media mogul, skilled orator, and... long-distance runner?
So say Rupe's genes, according to 23andMe, the genetic information [..] 
After Mediabistro.com's TVNewser blog wrote about Rupert Murdoch calling Keith Olbermann "crazy" at the D conference, the MSNBC anchor responded, correcting their facts and explain [..] 
Keep forgetting what paper you're reading when you crack the WSJ in the morning? It's not you. It really is different since Rupert Murdoch bought it last year.
How different? The Project [..] 
News Corp. (NWS) reports Q4 earnings tomorrow afternoon, but Rupert Murdoch has already given us a sense of what to look for: Speaking to reporters in India, Murdoch said his media conglomerate [..] 
What does the old guard at the Wall Street Journal think of what Rupert Murdoch (NWS) is doing to it? Who knows? They're under non-disparagement agreements.
So the New York [..] 
While ad sales in the U.S. tumble, Rupert Murdoch is taking great pains to point out that his News Corp. is a global company. He joined yesterday's earnings call (after some difficulty) from Bei [..] 
News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who started becoming pessimistic about the U.S. economy earlier this spring, is now downright gloomy: At his company's D conference Thursday, he predicted that [..] 
