Consumers WILL Pay For Online Content, But Not If They're Charged Twice!
The Old Way: consumers pay for distribution of content (cable, newspapers, ISP's, etc).
The New Way: consumers pay for the content, regardless of how it's distributed (TV Everywhere).
TV Everywhere's core value proposition for consumers is that they can view their TV when they want (on demand) and where they want (TV, PC, mobile, tablet, etc). It's a no brainer proposition; who wouldn't want that?!
Newspapers need to do the same thing for news content. This is where Murdoch is both right and wrong. He's right in that consumers SHOULD pay for the value of quality content, but he's wrong in that they should pay twice for the same content: once for physical newspapers and again for online access. Consumers WILL pay for the value of quality content, as long as they only pay for the "piece of content" once, and are able to view it how they want, when they want. Assuming that the consumption of the content can be tracked across all devices, that ads can be dynamically placed across all devices, and that the content programmer gets "credit" for the view.... everybody wins. End of debate.
