WSJ online subscription revenue to rise: Murdoch

NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said online subscription revenue at The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones could rise by $300 million a year over the next two to three years.

That and other projections about how the WSJ.com could perform convinced Murdoch that making the site completely free -- a plan that he had toyed with after buying parent company Dow Jones & Co -- was not the right way to go, he said at a Goldman Sachs media conference in New York on Wednesday.

"When I looked at the figures and saw what could be done, I changed my mind totally," Murdoch said.

He did not say how much WSJ.com or Dow Jones currently generate in subscription revenue. A News Corp spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment.

The increase in subscription revenue comes at a time when many online news outlets have decided that it is impossible to draw large numbers of readers while charging them for access.

The Journal's website also could bring in more than $100 million a year in annual advertising revenue, and perhaps a "couple hundred million more" in the future, Murdoch added.

The website, which underwent a redesign earlier this week, features a combination of free and paid articles and other content. One of the goals of the new version of the site is to bring more nonsubscribers to it to help bulk up its advertising sales.

Despite his enthusiasm for the Journal, Murdoch said he was not interested in buying more newspapers, which in the United States are struggling with a punishing decline in ad revenue.

Local television ad revenue also is bad, Murdoch said, particularly because of lower ad spending by automakers.

A better performer is News Corp's Fox Interactive Media division, where its MySpace online social network is bringing in more than $500,000 for a day of advertising on its site. On some days, he said, MySpace can get up to $1 million a day in ads.

MySpace also reported the highest-ever number of monthly unique users for its site last month, Murdoch said.

News Corp shares fell 75 cents, or 5.64 percent, to $12.54 on the New York Stock Exchange as the wider market fell.

(Reporting by Robert MacMillan, editing by Maureen Bavdek)