What newspapers can learn from television

The news business

Channel change

Oct 5th 2013 |From the print edition

LAST November Mike Darcey, then a top executive at BSkyB, a British satellite-television company, received a phone call from Rupert Murdoch, the boss of News Corporation. Mr Murdoch wanted him to run News UK (formerly News International), his scandal-plagued British newspaper unit, even though Mr Darcey had never worked in publishing. “Don’t worry about it,” Mr Murdoch said. “It’s exactly the same” as television.

Television and newspapers seem to have little in common. The business of flickering screens is thriving while newspapers are shrinking. So Mr Darcey, who took charge in January, is pushing his titles, including the Sun, a populist tabloid, and the Times, a higher-brow paper, to learn lessons from his former industry.

One is not to give away content to some readers while asking others to pay. The Times learnt that lesson in 2010, when it started charging for online content. The Sun started doing so last August. Both papers, historically more dependent on fickle news-stand sales than steadier subscriptions, are trying to entice subscribers so they can have a direct relationship with—and collect more data on—their customers.

Pay-TV companies lure and retain subscribers by adding features, such as free films and channels. Mr Darcey thinks newspapers should, too. Earlier this year News UK reportedly paid £30m ($48m) for three-year mobile and online rights to clips from English Premier League football matches. They sit behind the newspapers’ paywalls and are thus an incentive to subscribe. If this works, other newspapers may join the bidding for rights to sports and entertainment videos.

Newspapers need the fresh thinking outsiders can provide. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, an e-commerce giant, will no doubt shake up the Washington Post, which he recently bought (with his own money). Mr Darcey, a tough New Zealander, does not have Mr Murdoch’s sentimental attachment to newspapers. “If you keep saying ‘newspaper’, there’s the risk you constrain your thinking,” Mr Darcey says. “We distribute our branded proposition in several ways, one of which is…on paper.”

But Mr Darcey’s immediate task is to arrest the drop in revenue from readers and advertisers. Since putting up its paywall the Times has increased paid sales slightly, to around 536,000 (as of March 2013); the share of digital and print subscriptions has risen to about half. But theTimes is still not profitable and has not been in recent memory. The plan to charge for online access to the Sun, even at the low price of £2 per week, is risky, says Mark Oliver of Oliver and Ohlbaum, a media consultancy. Readers of tabloid newspapers are poorer (the average Sunreader earns one-fifth the income of a Times man). They have not yet been willing to pay for news online.

Mr Darcey will have to read more unwelcome headlines about his own company. In 2011 it was revealed that journalists at the News of the World, a News International tabloid, were hacking the phones of celebrities and others, including Milly Dowler, a murdered schoolgirl. Mr Murdoch quickly shut the newspaper. On October 28th Rebekah Brooks, News International’s former boss, who has been charged with conspiracy, will go on trial, along with seven others. The courtroom drama may not hurt newspaper sales—few readers associate the Sun and theTimes with phone-hacking—but it could damage newsroom morale. The Sun thrives on front-page scoops. Journalists may pursue them less vigorously when rivals festoon their front pages with images of their former boss in court.

From the print edition: Business