News Corp. Digital Chief Miller: You're Gonna Pay

(MoneyWatch)  News Corp. chief digital officer Jon Miller spent part of one of his first public appearances since joining the company making it clear that a return to a paid content model -- as in paid by consumers -- is all but inevitable.

Mostly (though sadly The Hollywood Reporter, which conducted the interview, doesn't seem to have uploaded video of it), Miller was talking about the bundling concept, in which people pay one price for a bunch of online news offerings. Though Miller was short on detail, it's an idea News Corp. would be able to make good on. I've long thought that even for the WSJ, which has had a paid content model online for more than a decade, there was a certain amount of protection in being part of an organization that also includes TV stations, movie studios and satellite networks. Like the eternally money-losing New York Post, the WSJ can hide behind Rupert Murdoch's skirts (just mixing metaphors here, not suggesting cross-dressing) until it's safe to come out with a business model that actually works for this long-term. In fact, News Corp., in all honesty, is how I see the paid content ball getting rolling for the entire media industry; those with the most diversified portfolios -- and therefore the least risk in experimenting -- will lead the charge. On any number of levels it's much harder for, say, The New York Times Company, to draw a similar line in the sand.

But Miller didn't leave the paid content talk just to news. He also speculated that Hulu could at some point charge for some of its content. One wonders how this will go over with the other players at Hulu; he attends his first Hulu board meeting Monday, and admitted a paid content model for Hulu was just his own speculation.