News Corp. CEO: DJX to get flexible pricing

Dow Jones & Co. will adjust the pricing of its DJX subscription product to make it “more flexible and thus more compelling to clients,” News Corp. chief executive Robert Thomson said Thursday.

Joe Pompeo of Capital New York writes, “On a Thursday afternoon conference call with Wall Street analysts, Thomson said the decision to change course on DJX followed an ‘intensive assessment of the state of the business’ and he emphasized that the institutional business is ‘very much core’ to the company’s overall strategy.

“‘To be frank, the execution was not quite right, and the trajectory was not quite right,’ said Thomson. ‘Will Lewis has been an efficacious presence. He’s making quite a difference in terms of mood and momentum. What you’ll see is a much more flexible approach to our customers. Not a plethora of prices, but a pricing structure that makes sense to users.’

“Thomson’s comments followed the release of News Corp’s financial results for the second fiscal quarter of 2014, during which company revenues fell 4 percent to $2.24 billion, largely due to lower advertising revenues in the News and Information Segment. Revenues for that segment were down 9 percent to around $1.61 billion.”

Read more here. Dow Jones is the parent of The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and Marketwatch.com.