Wired magazine has fascinating profile of Rupert Murdoch in the July 2006 edition. The article opens with this quote from Murdoch which gives context to News Corp’s current mission online:
“To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media – which, incidentally, is what really destroyed the old world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are taking control.â€
Deeper in the article Murdoch provides the business case for their online investment:
“Everything we’ve ever done is about giving people choices,†he says. “The Net has a billion people looking for news, sports, and entertainment. Another billion are on mobile phones, and another couple of billion are coming up behind those. That’s a hell of a lot more people making choices.â€
But these quotes don’t do the long article justice. There are opinions on all manner of things including newspapers – which, by the way, are discussed as online entities. No comment on print product. Read the article at Wired for yourself. My take away was the extent of Murdoch’s commitment to social media. It’s as if he sees social media as bigger than news in pulling viewers/readers/traffic. I’d like to hear from others in his organisation on this.
The article ends with this quote:
CONTENT VS. DISTRIBUTION
Distribution was nearly king – you couldn’t get a cable channel going in this country without John Malone. But when real broadband arrives, owning distribution will be less and less important.
Fascinating.