I didn’t see much follow up on this article from last week about how News Corp‘s Rupert Murdoch may expand his print capabilities for the NY edition of the Wall Street Journal but paying the NY Times to use its printing resources. Interesting concept…. What’s more interesting to me is why Rupert Murdoch is making an effort to compete with the print edition of the NY Times with a new, regional print edition of the Wall Street Journal. The Times’ challenges in print have been well covered and, well, print just doesn’t look like a growth opportunity right now. The Times is facing challenges not because of a lack of quality, but because of technology. The last thing readers seem to want now is another broad sheet in print. News Corp of all companies should know just how difficult the NY can be even in better times. It after all owns the NY Post.

The Wall Street Journal seemed to be doing fine the way it was in New York. It served a rather big niche interested in more depth and offering more business analysis than did the Times. Then Rupert Murdoch decided he wanted to go head to head and the Journal has started to offer less in the way of business news and more in the way of general reporting. I would have thought that he would have read the writing on the wall (the digital wall, that is) and decided to rev the Journal’s digital engines.

Murdoch Needs the N.Y. Times to “Go After” the N.Y. Times | NBC New York

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If you live in the Manhattan area, and aren’t one of the pioneers who have already cut their cable cords, you may have seen the ad campaign. “Standing up to” Fox, Time Warner cable is asking its customers to support its effort to “get tough” with the media giant, which has threatened to yank its content from Time Warner if Time Warner doesn’t agree to a $1 per subscriber rate (an estimated 300% increase) by tonight at 11:59 PM (or whenever the agreement technically expires today).

And so it has gone – with Time Warner publicly waging a war against Fox whilst continuing to resist Fox’s demand. To date, there has been no resolution, but tonight is the night, ladies and gents. Today is the deadline – Time Warner can either agree to Fox’s terms, the two can agree to lesser but still amenable terms, or Time Warners subscribers (in certain selected markets, including New York) can kiss the upcoming season of American Idol goodbye!

Of course, Fox likely feels it is in a great position to make this demand now because, as the Gizmodo report linked above points out, it’s America’s #1 most watched network. Well, that and its retransmission agreement with Time Warner for New York (and certain other markets) is up as of the end of the day today. But any way you look at it, this is just bad news for many Americans.

It’s a fight in which you can really see both sides.

On the one hand, Fox looks around at cable networks like ESPN and MTV, who are getting well over $1 per subscriber from cable companies and thinks – hey, we’ve got more viewers, therefore our content is more valuable, yet we’re not even getting A dollar, let alone the several that ESPN gets ($4 per this Times report). And the cable companies are making plenty of cash off of retransmitting OUR content to boot!

On the other hand, the cable companies (like Time Warner) look around at the network television market and say – hey, over half of this country gets its television from cable, without us (and others, of course), you’d be reaching that much less of the population.

But regardless of who’s right and who’s wrong, something will change.

Either Time Warner will yield to Fox’s demands, “setting a precedent” for the other major networks to follow, the two will find some middle ground between the current rate and $1, or Fox will yield to Time Warner, realizing that without the chunk of Time Warner viewers, it isn’t the top dog anymore (just so we’re clear – I don’t know that eliminating Time Warner customers from Fox’s viewership would have that significant an impact, but given that they’re talking about the New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Orlando and other markets, I have to imagine it will have a decent impact).

In either case, for Time Warner customers who like college football could be pretty sour when they go to turn on Friday’s Rose Bowl game, only to find out that they can’t see it.

If you’re a Time Warner customer, you can find out if you’re at risk of losing Fox’s channels (or FX, or the Speed Network, among others) by going to RollOverOrGetTough.com.

And either way, we wish you a very happy New Year from The Digital Breakfast!

Here’s to a great 2010!!

Likely frustrated by their multi-million dollar ad campaign’s inability to draw more than a negligible number of users away from Google, Microsoft has allegedly entered talks with News Corp. in an attempt to get the media giant to remove links to its news content from Google, rather feeding them exclusively to Microsoft’s Bing. Additionally, News Corp. is hinting that whether this deal happens or not, it is likely going to require users to pay for access to its content, as it already does for the Wall Street Journal.

Should a potential deal between Microsoft and News Corp. come to fruition, it could represent a revolutionary moment that would force other online media sources to reevaluate their own web strategies. Though whether or not it would change anything is at this point completely speculative (as is whether or not this is just an attempt to force Google to make a competing offer to News Corp.).

Personally, I have yet to quite understand Microsoft’s intent with Bing. MSN search never achieved the traction Microsoft wanted, and with such a foothold in the computer hardware/software market, one would think that the best move Microsoft could make would be to concentrate on their core (and profitable) businesses. And yet they persist in the search market, adding really very little value (despite a professed intent to do so).

Now, I have to admit, I haven’t spent much time using Bing. But that’s mostly because I don’t have to! Google has been the leader in search engines for at least a decade, and since I always find what I am looking for using Google search, there’s really no reason for me to switch.

Either way, that’s somewhat besides the point.

Heretofore, the internet’s growth has been driven in large part by limited restraint. And as Craigslist founder, Craig Newmark related to the New York Times – “The spirit of the Internet is about people working with each other, and that is part of the Google ethic.” Google has always principally provided tools for users, not content providers, or publishers or anyone else, although it does offer products for those groups as well. When Google develops products, it always seems like its main focus is making sure it gives the user something meaningful. Obviously it wants to profit from this, but it has always seemed to understand that good products will lead to more profits.

By limiting content from a major media conglomerate to only one search engine, Microsoft and News Corp. will really be blowing the doors right off the open nature of the web. Instead of just choosing a search engine, users will be forced to choose the search engine on which they can search the media sources they want to access. Of course, if users know the media source they want to access, they could always just do so directly, without using a search engine. But if a deal goes through, and other media entities follow suit, users will be forced to choose one search engine or another, based on artificially imposed restraints.

But perhaps the most ludicrous part of the entire story is that Microsoft considers this “adding value” to the search market. Well, folks, the reality is, this only adds value for Microsoft and News Corp., arguably at the expense of users. It’s not like links to News Corp. content don’t already appear on Bing. Of course they do! By limiting those links exclusively to Bing, Microsoft isn’t giving the user anything he or she didn’t have before, although they are probably going to give News Corp. a good chunk of change for the right to do so.

So while as the Times notes, this may lead to a big PR win for Microsoft with publishers, I’m not exactly sure how well it will go over with users.

What do you think?

Will this deal improve users’ search experiences? Will it improve the market in an appreciable way? Is Microsoft really adding value with a potential deal?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

News Corp. Weighs An Exclusive Alliance with Bing [New York Times]