For the BBC and others, a free website is an obvious and relatively cheap addendum to their main purpose of streaming news and entertainment on screen to a mass audience.

Our U.S. audience is composed of globally-minded Americans, an elite category, the ones who do have passports, the decision-makers, senior ranks in the administration, senators on Capitol Hill.

Thanks to social media such as Facebook and Twitter, a far wider range of people take part in gathering, filtering and distributing news.

In the summer of 2009, I modestly predicted that most major news organisations would be charging for content within 12 months. Charging, I argued, would not only plug the revenue gap; it would also help to re-establish value in their news product.

The good news is that concert consumer spending is miniscule compared to total entertainment spending, so there's a lot of room to grow.

We're up against an ocean of entertainment shows, and we've got one of the most famous (news brand) names in TV. That, to me, is not a failing situation.