Consumers have turned their noses up at Rupert Murdoch's plans to charge for online news content and say they will go elsewhere if they are forced to pay to access news on his News Corp websites.
That's the conclusion of a survey into the attitudes of consumers towards the idea of paid content immediately following Murdoch's controversial announcement that his media empire plans to charge readers to access his flagship news websites, including The Sun, The Times and the News of the World.
The survey conducted by MediaBlog, a blog run by leading independent media commentators, found that less than a third of respondents would be prepared to pay to view news content on News Corp websites.
The study into the reaction of more than 1,000 UK consumers also reflected the predominant view within the media industry that people would simply go elsewhere if confronted by online charging.
Not a single person questioned said they were prepared to pay for sport news or celebrity gossip or thought that The Sun offered anything they could not find elsewhere online.
The survey demonstrates that Murdoch has real work on his hands if he is to make a go of changing the habits of media consumers, who have come to take free online news for granted.
The question hot on the lips of the PR industry is who will ultimately end up paying? Murdoch or online consumers?
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