Murdoch Questions YouTube Business Model

NEW YORK, February 9: News Corporation’s chairman and CEO,
Rupert Murdoch, told attendees at McGraw-Hill’s Media Summit in New York
yesterday that while he finds YouTube “hypnotic,” he questioned the
user-generated content site’s ability to deliver significant ad revenues.

According to CNET News.com, Murdoch asked, “How do you
monetize it?… If you interrupt the flow of videos with commercials, [users] are going to go with [MySpace] or somewhere else."

Murdoch discussed a range of issues in conversation with BusinessWeek’s editor-in-chief, Steve Adler, at the event,
including his love of the hit 20th Century Fox release Borat:
Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and plans for a sequel. Murdoch noted that he had
seen the film three times. "We laughed like hell…we went out to dinner and
laughed all over it… You wake up the next morning and you say 'God, that was
gross’… I don't think it destroys our culture or anything. It's a pretty clever
picture."

Speaking about the new FOX Business Channel, formally
unveiled yesterday with a slated Q4 launch in 30 million homes, Murdoch avoided
discussing specific program ideas, "everything we do, CNBC will
copy." According to BusinessWeek he
noted that News Corp.’s offering will be "more business-friendly than
CNBC,” which, he said, "leap[s] on every scandal, or what they think is a
scandal.”

On the company’s Asian interests, Murdoch noted the
challenges of the China market, which he has been pursuing for some time now.
"China is immense, [but it] is not opening up yet." India, however,
with its “working democracy, with rule of law. We find it is [the] most
exciting [developing media market].”