Not a week goes by before Rupert Murdoch rocks the media world again, this time in his company’s former hometown of Adelaide, Australia.

At a shareholders meeting on Tuesday, Murdoch confirmed what everyone suspected — WSJ.com is expected to go free. That decision means relinquishing in the near term a hard-won 1 million subscribers paying up to $99 a year to access the site.

Murdoch said he expected 10 million to 15 million readers “in every corner of the Earth” as a result. Lehman Brothers earlier estimated in August the site will need to boost pageviews by two to three times to recoup the estimated $65 million in lost subscription revenue or close to half of WSJ.com’s revenue in total. That’s a tall order, Lehman estimated.

Clearly, Murdoch is planning for the long term, where WSJ.com and its sister properties MarketWatch.com aims to put a serious dent not only in Financial Times and the New York Times, but also the big online finance portals Yahoo Finance and MSN Money.

(Reuters)

Keep an eye on:

• Yahoo struck deals to offer mobile phone Web services with nine wireless carriers across Asia. (Reuters)
• U.S. house price comparison Web site Zillow.com struck a deal with 11 publishers of 282 newspapers to carry their real estate ads. (Reuters)
• Longer form online videos gains more viewers, according to a Move Networks study. (TechCrunch)
• CBS News writers and editors to vote on authorizing a strike on Nov. 15. (AP via NYT)

(Photo: Reuters file)