Murdoch: Classified Ad River 'Dried Up'

By: E&P Staff In an interview with the overseas trade paper Press Rupert Murdoch has forecast a gloomy future for newspapers with the growth of the Internet, saying he doesn't know "anybody under the age of 30 who has ever looked at a classified ad."

The press baron once described newspaper classified advertising revenue as providing "rivers of gold." He now says: "Sometimes rivers dry up."

"This is a generational thing -- we've been talking about a 15- or 20-year slide on this," the News Corp chairman said. "Certainly I don't know anybody under 30 who has ever looked at a classified advertisement in a newspaper. With broadband they do more and more transactions online."

But Murdoch denied he has been forced into a "panic buying" of Internet companies because of falling ad revenues.

News Corp. began a new media spending spree in July when it bought the myspace.com parent company Intermix.

But Murdoch said in the latest interview, "We have a huge amount of work ahead to get that whole thing right. And we're working very hard to keep improving."