Mr Murdoch said the company hopes to generate at least 10 to fifteen times as much traffic to the WSJ site by making it free. The company will make more money by attracting more readers, he said.
News Corporation is expected to complete its acquisition of WSJ owners Dow Jones – announced last month – by the end of the year.
Speaking at the annual News shareholder in meeting in Adelaide, Mr Murdoch said: “We are studying it and we expect to make that free, and instead of having 1 million (subscribers), having at least 10 million to 15 million in every corner of the earth.”
The WSJ.com site is one of the few internet sites to have successfully introduced a subscription model – charging its million readers an annual fee of US$50 (A$55).
After spending much the nineties as an online sceptic before ultimately becoming a big investor, Mr Murdoch told the meeting the internet was now generating US$1 billion a year for the company
While not expressing surprise at the size of the internet revenue, he did remark it was somewhat unsual given it came from a sector that “didn’t exist” as recently as a few years ago.
“I'd like to be able to say it was great prescience on my part but there's a certain amount of luck to it,” he said.
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