Monday, January 22, 2018

"Rupert Murdoch calls for Facebook and Google to subsidize the news business" (FB; GOOG)

That...is about as likely as going back in time and reversing News Corp.'s purchase of Myspace.*
Interesting attempt to define the parameters of the negotiations going forward though.

From The Verge:
An extraordinary demand from a publishing powerhouse

Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of publishing empire News Corporation, issued a statement today proposing a new licensing deal between media organizations and platform-owning tech companies. His goal: get entities like Facebook and Google to pay money to publishers, effectively in exchange for the value news outlets bring to those platforms. 

Citing the popularization of “scurrilous news sources through algorithms that are profitable for these platforms but inherently unreliable,” Murdoch says Facebook and Google should pay money in an arrangement similar to so-called carriage fees. These fees are the money paid by cable and satellite television providers to local, over-the-air broadcast stations for the right to carry local transmissions. In the US, this is an industry norm, with the fees being baked into what’s known as retransmission consent. That arrived back in 1992 in an agreement that became legally mandated between cable operators and stations with the United States Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act.
“If Facebook wants to recognize ‘trusted’ publishers then it should pay those publishers a carriage fee similar to the model adopted by cable companies,” Murdoch writes. “The publishers are obviously enhancing the value and integrity of Facebook through their news and content, but are not being adequately rewarded for those services. Carriage payments would have a minor impact on Facebook’s profits but a major impact on the prospects for publishers and journalists.”...
...MORE

*Rupert's people bought Myspace in 2005 for $580 million. 
Facebook traffic passed Myspace's in 2008.
News Corporation flipped Myspace to Justin Timberlake and Specific Media in 2011.
For $35 million.