News Corp. (NWSA) Chairman Rupert Murdoch said on Thursday that the mood at the Allen & Co. media conference was quite bearish, but that attendees were still looking for ways to generate money from their online content.
"There has not been a lot of politics talk, but I’m shocked at the business mood, which is talking about either we are at the bottom of the recession or we are going lower. But it is going to take years and years -- like five years at least -- before we see any real growth coming out of this," Murdoch told FOX Business Network. News Corp. is FBN’s parent company.
This year, the summit, which is held in Sun Valley, Idaho, is focusing on technology and how to generate money from the digital world.
"We have the answer, and we are doing it well at The Wall Street Journal," Murdoch said. "You’ve got the WSJ.com, and you pay for that, and there are nearly one and a quarter million people who are doing that, and we get a lot of advertising with it."
Murdoch noted that the Journal, with its finance and investment content, has a big and specialized business and thus has been able to get subscribers to pay to view content. Charging money for content on the Web is still relatively rare.
"It’s true what the people say, the distribution of the news gets cheaper every day because of new technology…but you still have to have something to move it, and the content," he said. "The news itself can’t come free."
Meanwhile, Murdoch observed that people are still showing support for President Obama, though he warned that attitudes toward the Administration could become more negative if the public sees a further increase in unemployment.
With the Administration using government as the agent of change, Murdoch thinks allowing Congress to control spending is “crazy and leads to tremendous waste.” He said it is more important for the President to introduce his policy and enforce a plan, which could result in more support and better effects.
Murdoch declined to comment on a report by the U.K. newspaper the Guardian that a News Corp. subsidiary paid around $1.6 million to three people who, the Guardian claims, had their cell phones hacked into by a newspaper owned by that subsidiary.
