Rupert Murdoch Gets Shy: Tries To Hide Traffic To His Pre-Paywalled Sites

from the don't-want-any-comparisons... dept

It looks like even Rupert Murdoch and his crew at News Corp. aren’t all that confident in how well his new paywalls for his newspapers in the UK are going to do. Apparently, News Corp. has convinced the media-owned organization, ABC, that tracks traffic to newspaper sites in the UK, to no longer publish the numbers for his sites. ABC is still tracking the numbers, but it won’t publish them. Apparently, someone is a bit sensitive about people noticing how much traffic has shrunk. Maybe it’s starting to sink in that there really is competition online, and most of it is remaining free.

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Companies: news corp

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Comments on “Rupert Murdoch Gets Shy: Tries To Hide Traffic To His Pre-Paywalled Sites”

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18 Comments
DS says:

Re: Re:

In an infinite universe, anything is possible….

…but not always probable.

What would they gain from hiding success? Wouldn’t large numbers attract more customers (well, if that many people think it’s a good idea, it must be), and allow them to be more attractive to advertisers?

Naaa… couldn’t be… right?

barney rumble says:

murdoch is getting close to trouble if

as the youth of today progresses with 500000 friends on facebook WHO THE HELL needs any news websites.
Anything remotely relevant to the universe is world wide in seconds and this is why Murdoch’s next move as we all see with failing morons that do not know how to adapt is to start finding some way of suing people…like bloggers ( pirates OH that was a good laugh)
I would counter sue for slander , defamation, libel, Pain and suffering. you can get all the free news you want via non paying sites and i can’t remember when if ever i have visited any murdoch website.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: murdoch is getting close to trouble if

The need for news sites would still be there – you still need someone to help filter through the news, help make sense of more complicated situations and separate the fake news from the real stuff. A quality, non-partisan source that provides these services could be very valuable.

Of course, this is the exact opposite of the way Murdoch runs his organisations. The web will certainly not be a poorer place once his shrill, biased, partisan tabloid crap is removed from public view.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: murdoch is getting close to trouble if

Except the shrill partisan tabloid crap is what a lot of people want. The web is full of it because informed quality news is boring. Also, it doesn’t provide a simple answer to every problem by getting angry at one political party or the other.

Hephaestus (profile) says:

A little about Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdochs Assets and a little about Rupert Murdoch and wikipedias page on news corp

Since ABC isnt the only one that tracks traffic to newspaper sites in the UK. Lets use Alexa Internet Traffic Stats and Metrics on News Corporations Newspapers

Australasian region Newspapers:

Daily Telegraph
Fiji Times
Gold Coast Bulletin
Herald Sun
NT News
Post Courier
Sunday Herald Sun
Sunday Mail
Sunday Tasmanian
Sunday Territorian
Sunday Times
The Advertiser
The Australian
The Courier Mail
The Mercury
The Sunday Mail
The Sunday Telegraph
Weekly Times

United Kingdom region Newspapers:

News International
News of the World
The Sun
The Sunday Times
The Times
Times Literary Supplement

United States region Newspapers:

New York Post

InterNational

online.wsj.com/public/us
WSJ
WSJ digital network

I thought I would do the whole list … not bad for five minutes work.

Mehda says:

Re

There’s no point in hiding traffic, it’s subscriptions that generate revenue for a pay-walled website. You can have a situation while the traffic holds up but subscriptions remain low because e.g. you can read 3 articles from on the Times for free per day. and how many people read more than 3 articles from the same online newspaper these days?

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