LOS ANGELES—Rupert Murdoch relished the revamped Internet site for The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, even as he said he regretted the sale of a large stake in DirecTV Group Inc.
The News Corp. chief executive told analysts at a conference that the relaunched WSJ.com, combined with the print version of the iconic newspaper, would add $300 million in subscription revenue in the next two to three years.
The company did not disclose its current subscription revenues. News Corp. bought the paper’s owner, Dow Jones & Co., in December for more than $5 billion.
The Web site, relaunched Tuesday, would account for most of the revenue increase, he said in comments broadcast online.
“We’re going to be getting revenues there of over $100 million in advertising, let alone what will eventually be a couple of hundred million or more in subscription revenue,” he said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in New York.
As part of the retooled Web site, a large banner ad briefly pushes down the rest of the home page. Murdoch said the ad is selling for $100,000 a day.
The media mogul had once toyed with the idea of eliminating paid subscriptions for the online site, but Wednesday he said, “When I looked at the figures, saw what could be done, I changed my mind totally.”
He said last month he intended on raising the subscription price for 1.1 million subscribers.
Murdoch also said Wednesday that he “might have been wrong” in selling off a 41 percent stake in DirecTV to John Malone’s Liberty Media Corp. in February for a 16 percent stake in News Corp. plus $625 million in cash.
Liberty Media is based in Englewood, Colo.
He said the satellite TV company has held up better than expected against the triple threat of TV, Internet and phone services offered by cable and phone companies partly because of its high-definition channel offerings.
“I thought it was going to be more affected by the ‘triple play’ and everything than it has been,” he said.
“So I might have been wrong. I don’t think I’m wrong in the long term, but in the short term, I might have been wrong.”
News shares dropped 78 cents, or 5.8 percent, to $12.78 on Wednesday, as the Dow Jones industrial average shed 4.1 percent amid a crisis of confidence in the U.S. financial system. DirecTV shares fell $1.47, or 5.6 percent, to $24.82.
