Gawker: valleywag, bill o'reilly

You Will Soon Pay to Access All of Rupert Murdoch's Online Rubbish

The Cajun Boy — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 05:09:07 EDT

Rupert Murdoch announced plans yesterday to charge for online access to all of News Corp's media properties. Coincidentally, the company posted a $203 million loss for its fourth quarter, down from a profit of $1.1 billion from the same period last year.

Citing high "impairment and operating charges" the company incurred through its ownership of MySpace, News Corp. shareholders lost 8 cents per share and the company lost 11% of its total revenue in their fourth quarter. So it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that Murdoch would announce plans to end free access to all of his company's online offerings on the same day.

Reports the Financial Times:

Rupert Murdoch has vowed to charge for all the online content of his newspapers and television news channels, going well beyond his prediction in May that the company would test pay models on one of its stronger papers within the year.

"We intend to charge for all our news websites," Mr Murdoch said.

"If we're successful, we'll be followed by all media," he added, predicting "significant revenues" from charging for differentiated news online.

He warned that "the big competition will be coming from the BBC," which offers online news for free, but said: "Our policy is to win."

Murdoch's move, if he holds fast to his plans, could play a substantial role in the future of content availability on the internet. While charging for online access to the Wall Street Journal has been mildly successful due to the willingness of the paper's affluent readership to pony up, it'll be interesting to see if the same holds true for New Corp.'s other, less "classy" properties. If his move to force people to pay for access to Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, the News of the World, the New York Post, etc. is successful, expect many others to follow suit, something sure to please David Simon. However, this idea sure as shit seems to have fail written all over it.

Pic via

Bill O'Reilly and Co. Investigate the Nintendo Craze

Hamilton Nolan — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:18:02 EDT

In 1988, a young Bill O'Reilly and his Inside Edition team tried to answer the question: "What the hey is this 'Mario Brothers' craze sweeping the nation?" They failed, of course. Entertainingly!

See how many of the following classic moments you can spot in this clip:

"All I can think of is the guy in the library."

Ron Leingang, "Game-Play Counselor"

Howard Phillips, "Fun Club President"

"I had trouble with Lincoln Logs! (Sigh). Kids and fantasy."

[via Mental Floss]

Fox News Twitter Hacked By Bill O'Reilly

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:14:02 EST

This is currently the lead post on the official Fox News Twitter page. Hackers are cool again.

"Despicable, slimy, scummy websites" take revenge on Bill O'Reilly

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:00:00 EDT

After a 4chan message board user broke into Sarah Palin's Yahoo Mail account and posted screenshots of her emails online, conservative Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly went on the air and yelled about it. "I'm not going to mention the Web site that posted this, but it's one of those despicable, slimy, scummy websites," said O'Reilly on his show. "Everybody knows where this stuff is, OK, and they know the people who run the website, so why can't they go there tonight to the guy's house who runs it, put him in cuffs and take him down and book him? " 4chan management responded by changing the banner atop its random image posting board so that it read: "DESPICABLE, SLIMY, SCUMMY." One of the site's members took a more aggressive course of action, and hacked into O'Reilly's subscription-only site, BillOReilly.com, and posted the names, billing addresses, email addresses and passwords of 205 paying subscribers to Wikileaks and 4chan. In a statement, Wikileaks expressed no sympathy for O'Reilly — calling his site's security "nonexistent" — but had plenty for O'Reilly's attackers: "The hack was a response to the pundit's recent scurrilous attacks over the Sarah Palin's e-mail story — including on Wikileaks and other members of the press."

Bill O'Reilly dance mix rocks the house

Paul Boutin — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Look, I used to be a professional musician. And basically, most mashups, remixes, and other forms of Music 2.0 just don't work. All brain, no booty. But this remix of Bill O'Reilly's most awesomely human moment — "Fuck it! We'll do it live! Fucking thing sucks!" — blows Girl Talk off the turntable. Throw away your thinking caps and crank it to 11. Valleywag's contribution to the fad: We've successfully tainted Natali Del Conte with the line. it's so much cuter when she says it.