The odd thing about Murdoch is that he has been a keen adopter of new technology in the past – print technology and Wapping and satellite television, but he doesn’t seem to have the same magic touch with the internet.

He was late to the dot.com party and only really took it seriously when the bubble was well on its way to bursting. Then, in a pretty messy and costly retreat, he pulled back. He over-paid for MySpace, and the focus on revenue over a wider plan for development means that it’s an also ran. Traffic to the Times website dropped over the summer as its competitors continued to increase traffic.

I think one of Murdoch’s problems, and he is by no means alone in terms of the media in this respect, is that content is no longer scarce but time and attention are. In terms of media economics, we haven’t really wrapped our heads around the economics of abundance.

Another disruptive dynamic in terms of media economics on the internet is around distribution. Analogue television and newspapers had incredibly high capital costs in terms of production and distribution. Internet production and distribution costs have decreased over the last decade as computing power costs have declined.

Digital abundance is even greater than the abundance of choice in multi-channel digital television, and really satellite television still is based on scarcity because the cost of launching such a service still limits competition. It’s an imperfect analogy to the market economics that newspapers are facing on the internet. Murdoch could see off competitors just by taking bigger risks and seizing a first mover advantage in terms of BSkyB. In many ways, whether digital multi-channel cable or satellite, is still an old scarcity-based business.

This is why I highlighted the irony of pining for 18th century cover prices. We’re not going to solve the challenges of our business by ignoring the economic shift of the last decade.

If Murdoch can provide high quality journalism that people will pay to read, rather than being reliant upon advertising, I’d argue that’s a good thing. Others have tried before and failed.

The wonderful thing about now is that the old order is changing. The worrying thing about now is that things have to be paid for but we all want free. But you get what you pay for – or what someone else has paid for, and the snake in the grass is that the new ‘advertising’ may not be as overt as a colourful ad for products and services, but tucked away in the text or lurking in a hidden agenda.

So whilst I am with you that ‘freemium’ is much more in keeping with the current zeitgeist, if Murdoch can find a high enough quality/compelling enough product to get us paying for it, then all the better for the journalists who work for him.

People pay for cable and satellite TV when they have mainstream channels free, so it will be interesting to see where this big adventure takes us.

Murdoch’s not stupid and if the paid content model works for anyone, it will work for him. He has the space and funding to experiment. I personally think they’ll find it hard because one of their main currencies is celebrity, and celebrities can provide that information more accurately -and free – themselves in many cases.

I wouldn’t be saying goodbye and good luck, but ‘watch this space’. Excuse the expression, but it could just be sh*t or bust time!