News Corp.’s Plans To Eliminate The Online Middle Man

Rupert Murdoch’s earnings call comments continue to be the gift that keeps on giving. This time it’s Business Week reading the tea leaves. BW’s Steve Rosenbush matches Murdoch’s desire for “an original type of portal” with the idea that improvements in technology and increased user sophistication will cut out the middle men, ie the current portals, while customizing and personalizing the experience will become more important. In MySpace.com and Scout, Fox Interactive Media already has acquired some of the tools need to create that kind of experience. FIM also is creating critical mass with traffic. “What News Corp. is trying to do is both timely and inevitable,” Leo Hindery Jr., managing partner of InterMedia Partners, told BW.
Content companies that tried to build portals in the last round — Go, Snap, etc — couldn’t pull it off. But this is a different era and BW suggests the man who pushed Fox and Fox News into prominence could be the one to make this work. Meanwhile, FoxSports.com still relies on major distribution portal MSN for its success.

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