Crikey

Listen out for the sound of the Murdoch minions reacting to the cold water that Fairfax Media CEO Brian McCarthy has just poured on the idea of paid content news websites.

In his speech to the Fairfax AGM in Sydney this morning,  McCarthy hinted that he wasn’t a fan, and I think you’d have to take it as a given that the board doesn’t share the Rupster’s enthusiasm for screwing news site visitors for a bit of extra dough.

To make his grandiose plans work, Murdoch and News Corp need the likes of Fairfax and the ABC in Australia and the BBC in the UK to fall into line and charge for content on their general news websites, or he has to find political ways to neuter the public broadcasters.

He has started low-key talks with the Telegraph group in London to try to con them into his charge-for-content camp. The Telegraph’s website is very popular in Britain.

But for News in Australia, Fairfax is the great obstacle with its more-visited fleet of sites.  McCarthy seemed to question the profitability of locking up the company’s “general news websites” (such as smh.com.au).

“In relation to charging for online content, a great deal has been said and written on this subject over the past six months or so. We are looking closely at this issue and at this stage we have not made a final decision as to what course of action we may take,” said McCarthy. He continued:

Fairfax reaches more consumers than it ever has, and produces content that is highly valuable to these consumers.

Fairfax already charges for content online in a number of areas and is constantly reviewing further opportunities to charge for content in the digital space where it makes economic and strategic sense to do so.

It is, however, important that we maintain a high level of audience reach via our news sites such as smh.com.au and theage.com.au, plus many other sites.

Charging users of these general news sites for access may not be profitable for us in the long term.

Shareholders were told that the company is still doing it tough, although there had been an improvement in trading conditions.

For the first four months of this half, underlying EBITDA from continuing businesses has been below the same period last year by approximately 15%. By way of comparison, EBITDA for the last four months of the 2009 year was below the same period last year by approximately 40% … and I have already outlined the exceptional economic conditions we encountered at that time.

In the second half of 2010, we anticipate improved business conditions to deliver modest earnings growth compared with the same period last year.