News International grabs SunOnSunday.co.uk domain
Switcheroo after unknown individual registered url
News International bought the sunonsunday.co.uk and thesunonsunday.co.uk domain names late last week, after they had originally been grabbed by unknown individuals as the phone-hacking scandal engulfed the News of the World Sunday tabloid.
The final edition of that rag was published yesterday. But it's understood that News International boss and one-time editor of the NotW, Rebeka Brooks, has already begun talking about plans for a new title called Sun on Sunday.
Such a move would simply turn the company's daily newspaper, The Sun, into a seven-day operation.
The News Corp-owned firm already owns thesun.co.uk domain, so some might wonder why NI hasn't simply stuck with that name, thereby consolidating its costs and strengthening an existing brand.
Rival rag The Daily Mail owns the biggest newspaper website in the UK, and tags its Mail on Sunday title on as a sub domain to dailymail.co.uk, for example.
Both sunonsunday.co.uk and thesunonsunday.co.uk were orginally registered by an individual under the name of Mediaspring on 5 July. However, Nominet's Whois records were updated on 8 July to show that the domains are in fact now owned by News International. ®
COMMENTS
thus proving....
a) News International is responsible for registering or at least owning sunonsunday.co.uk
b) Closing NoTW is a cynical move that doesn't hurt News International at all
c) It's got no intention of changing its business model (same people in charge, same journos)
d) It's not a Fit and Proper Owner for Sky
Good to know
It's reassuring to find out that the Windscale Effect is still operational.
Have a devastaingly bad PR problem? Easy peasy, just change the name of the offending person/institute/liability. Within a few short weeks the entire british public will have forgotten all about the "old problems" and will embrace and throw money at exactly the same venture - just so long as it has a different name.
I love the manouvering that even the Reg is missing.
Just why are the politicians normally so in lurve with Murdoch suddenly becoming all vitriolic and demanding that with great vengeance and furious anger that News International be referred to the Competition Commission. Could it be that because with the lessening of Market share caused by the demise of NotW the competition commission will have no choice but to report that News International taking full control of BSkyB does not represent a monopoly of the media organisations in the UK and as such should be allowed to go ahead.
But what of the "fit and proper" test. Well that test is conducted by OfCom who are only being asked to comment but not to report. This couldn't be playing out any more predictably if it were an episode of Yes Minister.
All politicians get to be outraged, all government agencies get to say the right thing officially without any of it mattering a jot, and Rupert Murdoch gets what he wanted all along.
If he is really lucky BSkyBs share price will plummet so far that he can even lower his offer to buy from 700p per share to 600p per share and offset the cost of losing News of the World. Then reclaim that share by starting the Sunday version of the Sun.
You have to hand it to Murdoch, he knows how to play the game.
He even managed to get everyone reporting his arrival like the second coming in the press last night giving the public impression that he was out of the country and is therefore as clean as a whistle. I mean, how could he have known what was going on...he wasn't even there.
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