Rupert Murdoch's Op-Ed in his WSJ today was opportunistic and not terribly surprising based on his recent comments. He seems to be making a realistic case for his own set of challenges which are shared by many in the industry worldwide.

I have only one question for people to think about: Why do people everywhere insist the advertising business model for content is dead? It's not. It is as good an idea today as it was decades ago. The only thing that has changed is how efficient a business must be in order to be profitable.

The hidden challenge in the media business is that the empires that exist today suffer from the same social illness as the rest of America. Leverage.

The ad based business model is not going anywhere and among the many examples of why, Google may be the best. In fact, if you look closely at Ad Words, you can see a lot of reasons why it works so well.  Likewise, if you look at Coca Cola's success over the decades, it was not harmed when the bottlers became a business by itself. The US drinks as much soda as it does because the bottling industry is as good at what they do as Coca Cola is at making their products.