Murdoch Talks Media

How will it be different?

Facebook is more of a directory. People go looking for their relatives or their friends, who they are going to meet. With MySpace, people go there to find common interests, share music, that sort of thing.

Google (GOOG Quote) has become a major distributor and aggregator of news. You said earlier this year you weren't exactly happy with that and questioned its copyright legalities. You haven't said much publicly since then. Are you still at odds with Google and the search industry?

We were outspoken. And we'll be more outspoken on the whole issue of payment for copyright material and that goes to every aggregator, whether it be Yahoo! (YHOO Quote) or Google or Ask.com or anything. We employ thousands and thousands or people as do others. I mean, there are billions of dollars spent, probably every month, but certainly every year in the collection and the creation of copyright by organizations and they cannot do that and have that material which they own stolen from them or the business will be destroyed.

What do you think of Twitter?

It's an amazing phenomenon but I have no idea how they can monetize it. No one monetizes the Web today to any extent other than search.

How's advertising at The Wall Street Journal?

Marginally better than at other newspapers, but not great. Certainly we have reduced our costs at The Journal I think fully as much as we've declined in national advertising.

Do you think micropayments are a workable model for selling news online?

I don't think people will pay for it. We're still thinking our way through this and there will be micropayments as part of it, but I'm thinking much more along the lines of subscriptions like The Wall Street Journal does.

Are you annoyed you don't own CNBC?

No.

Why not?

Because we're going to enjoy the competition. We have to get wider distribution and that takes time. We are further ahead with Fox Business than we were at this stage with Fox News, and Fox News today is one of our very greatest and largest assets.