Bwah ha ha ha ha, as those crazy kids say today. In an Associated Press article noting that revenue from commercials is falling short of keeping TV moguls in private jets, Botoxed girlfriends and Tuscan villas, Fox owner Rupert Murdoch warns that the viewing audience should expect to pay more for satellite and cable service.
“Good programming is expensive,” bleats Murdoch.
How the hell would he know? Looking for “good programming” on TV in general, and Fox in particular, is like looking for virgins in a Nevada brothel. One may turn up now and then, but she won’t last long.
And yes, “The Simpsons” is the exception that proves the rule.
Murdoch and his News Corporation are frantically hunting new revenue streams, dreaming of the day when Fox News, the Times of London and The New York Post can join The Wall Street Journal in walling off all or part of their content, reserving it for paying customers only.
Yeah, good luck with that. While people may be willing to pony up for entertainment, news is another breed of dog altogether. Notes Alan B. Mutter, a media consultant and blogger, in a New York Times story: “One of the problems is newspapers fired so many journalists and turned them loose to start so many blogs. They should have executed them. They wouldn’t have had competition. But they foolishly let them out alive.”
Mad Blog Media 
Patrick,
Happy Holidays! I was traveling and am just now sitting down to a ‘puter for the first time in about a week.
So when do the fired journalists start clumping together to form small, nimble, local news websites that generate revenue from clicks? The goal wouldn’t necessarily be to develop a large, reliable news organization (although that might happen and would be wonderful). The goal would be to generate revenue to survive on and hopefully get big enough to get bought out by Murdoch et al.
I’m not a journalist, but could a 2-5 person operation create a website that was very specific–covering an NFL team or City Hall–and get good enough that the local traditional news organization would buy them up to gain their viewers, bring over the advertisers, and eliminate the competition?
Hey, Jeff,
Welcome back to the digital world (the real deal will wear a guy out after a while, eh?). I have a few thoughts on the guerrilla-journalism notion that I’ll save for a full post rather than a comment, but the nut is this: Nobody has to talk to a journalist, and won’t, unless they’re scared and/or stupid.
A “Rat Patrol” hit-and-run website wouldn’t pack the weight to induce wealthy and/or powerful people to cough up the goods — not in an era when they can put out their own heavily spun message, unfiltered, via Twitter, Facebook, website, e-mail spam-a-thon. Power responds only to power, and newspapers used to have some. A few still do, doggedly plodding through FOIA requests and other gruntwork in search of the story behind the story. A very few.
It takes time, and money, and talent — in short, all the things that newspapers used to have. And it demands a certain something of the readership — that they turn off “American Idol” and pay attention to something that matters. This makes people’s heads hurt and fails to sell wiener drugs, electronics and other must-have items.
OK, enough for this evening. More as my blood begins to boil, right around coffee time tomorrow.
Actually there are a few ‘bloggers’ who are making a living off the traditinal paper route. The LA KIngs hired up one of their former fishwrap employed journalists to write copy on the team. Full access (supossedly) which was not being used by the wrapper. Thus, the journalist from the paper is now making some coin doing what he did for a “tradtional news outlet.”
While one out of thirty teams hiring a journalist to do what may be a PR job might sound like nothing close to journalism, it seems that with the decline in readership, revenue and circulation of papers that this might be the first of many.
I won’t say that it will bring down the decline of journalism as we know it for papers – they are already doing that very well wothout any help – it does appear that with this step there is a change in “how” the news is delivered to a specific audience. The team may have a say about what is being said about them (something which they may not have had before), it is more than likely they are covering he gaps in coverage which the papers don’t want to handle; i.e. traveling with the team from city to city. Really, nothing new there as a lot of sports coverage has been handled by stringers for decades. See any ESPN coverage of the numerous “Breatt Favre Fiascos” over the past few years. They utlized one reporter to report on the entire “side” of the story (outside camp, outside the home, outside the airplanes, etc.).
Will this affect the outcome of the news cycle to the extent that Murdoch et al. don’t loose more cash? Probably not right away. However with the increase in social media sites to “report news” the whole cycle is becoming a lot less formal (in a business sense).
Just wait until it costs $1.99 to get the latest Tweet about something on your iFone.