BookyMedia

Observations of two disillusioned old-media churnalists

Aug 12, 2009

For the future of paid-for-content, look to the Sky

: Image by World Economic Forum via Flickr

We’ve all been getting our knickers in a knot about Murdoch’s moaning and subsequent surge to Planet Paywall, but we (myself included) have been forgetting one vital point: This is the man that put TV behind a paywall. And then he sold it to everyone.

Back in 1990 when BSkyB (the combination of the 1986-launched BSB and 1989-launched Sky) brought us a brave new world of broadcasting, critics claimed that it would never take off/would wreck our cultural compass.

Why would anyone pay for TV – especially the early offerings of satellite TV – when we had four perfectly good channels already? AND we’d already paid a licence fee to access those.

Secondly, TV was a slightly murky, slightly ‘common’ medium. Not unlike the charges levelled at NOTW and The Sun. People who liked that kind of stuff would never pay…

Fast forward to 2009. Despite an extra terrestrial channel and the invention of freeview, Sky TV is as ubiquitous in the homes of British people as big chavolines. And it’s not just us proles, it’s the full gambit from rich landowners down.

Sun readers are Sky TV subscribers. So is everyone else. We’re a nation willing to pay extra for exclusive content bundles – so long as it’s the right stuff in those bundles, at the right prices, with technologically useful, easy ways to access.

Murdoch didn’t buy up existing channels and sell them back to us, once he purchased BSB to fold in to his Sky venture, he collected unique content, the best of the best, and flashy hardware that people wanted. Sky TV was a status symbol for the masses AND a utility to the upper classes.

Free isn’t a status symbol. And you can argue that BSkyB rode the wave of the ‘Loadsa Money’ era. But we’re currently wading through a recession and Sky subscriptions are riding high.

So is Murdoch going to deliver the Sky Plus of online content retrieval and aggregation?

Is Murdoch going to bring us the 24, Lost and The Simpsons of online news and features?

Will News Corp. plunge funds into developing the Next Big Thing in broadband or ‘cloud’ technology, an equivalent advancement to HDTV?

Will The Sun (or its parent bundle) snag the rights to first-play online Premiership football highlights that Virgin Media currently owns?

Does the new walled garden planned by The Sunday Times have the online content equivalent of The Wire up its sleeve? Ready to prove that, far from erode critical and creative integrity, internet platforms could bring in a new dawn of clever content.

God, I really hope so. Because whatever you may think of the man and his empire, the media world would be far less interesting if Murdoch bricked himself and the ambitions of mass paid-for content into an embarrassing tomb.

Holly Seddon