Murdoch defeats self, again
Email 
Print
One of the best ways for a TV show to drive DVD sales is to stream old episodes online. It worked wonders for Monty Python, and after looking at the numbers, Chadwick Matlin concludes that it probably helped stem a natural decline in DVD sales for Arrested Development, too. Plus, since Arrested Development was on Hulu, there was a decent amount of ad revenue there as well.
So, naturally, Fox decided to pull Arrested Development from Hulu. Why? Fox won’t say. But my guess is that it’s all part of Rupert Murdoch’s new information-wants-to-be-paid evangelism. He’s looking all over the internet to see where he’s giving away valuable content, and then bringing down the hammer.
Does Murdoch know that he’s serving up full RSS feeds for his WSJ blogs? That’s the right thing to do, of course. But given the way he’s clearly thinking these days, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him trying to restrict their broad dissemination, too.
Comments RSSPost Your Comment
I still rent Arrested Development DVDs from Netflix. I would think they get a piece of that, too.
Er… ixnay on the RSS eedsfay.
I’ve pulled my WSJ subscription, thanks to Murdoch. FT, Google News, blogs, and wire services are enough. Rupert can have all the information but if it’s drowned by even more noise, then he’s not worth my time.
Well unless you can buy every single torrent site on the internet you’ll have no luck making me pay for content Murdoch.
WSJ is very easy to get in ways besides the RSS. Install Greasemonkey and then look on userscripts.org. Easy as pie.