West Australian Newspapers Holdings Ltd (WAN) may consider following Rupert Murdoch's News Corp down the path of charging for online news content, WAN and Seven Network Ltd chairman Kerry Stokes say.
Mr Stokes told reporters after WAN's annual general meeting in Perth on Wednesday that the publisher of The West Australian newspaper did not rule out ultimately charging a fee for its online content.
"We endorse News and Rupert Murdoch's position on that," Mr Stokes said.
"We're not sure how the model is going to work ... particularly when organisations such as the ABC are always going to have the (free) news on their website.
"Finding a model that we can charge for is challenging and I guess it is something we'll all be looking at because we need to get there."
He said traditional newspapers had been prematurely labelled a thing of the past.
"We've still got opportunities providing newspapers that people want to read."
Mr Stokes also told reporters he expected the advertising market would fully recover in 2010 after being pummelled during the global economic crisis.
"I firmly believe we'll be back at last year's level early next year," he said.
"The advertising market has only started to come back in the past couple of months and it's coming back strong."
Mr Stokes said he had some doubts the rebound would maintain momentum.
"I can't say I'm not worried about it because having been through the sheer cliff that we went over, to see such a recovery so quick is a concern," he said.
"It can't be that easy.
"We've got a recovery under way but I'm concerned it maintains its steam until next year."
Shareholders voted in favour of all resolutions on the agenda at the meeting, at which investors congratulated WAN's board during for the company's recent performance.
WAN's former board ceded control late last year as representatives of its largest shareholder, Seven, and new independent non-executive directors took the helm.
Meanwhile, Chief executive Chris Wharton told shareholders on Wednesday the media group expected to deliver a third straight quarter of year-on-year circulation growth for The West Australian newspaper during the December quarter.
The company achieved a second straight quarter of circulation growth in September, compared to the corresponding periods last year, for both its Monday-to-Friday editions and Saturday edition.
"That's significant," Mr Wharton told the annual general meeting in Perth.
"It's the first time in 15 years that consecutive increases (in circulation) have been achieved.
"This has not been achieved by discounting paper sales to ramp up circulation.
"We have actually reduced the number of discounted papers in the system ... for the past three quarter periods."
He said a third consecutive quarter of year-on-year increases in Monday-to-Friday circulation of The West Australian "hasn't happened for nearly 20 years".
"Saturday numbers will be down, though, on the comparable quarter last year."
He said this was due to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, which added about 15,000 sales a day to December quarter circulation figures.
© 2009 AAP
