From comments over at Balloon Juice, and I think this is exactly it:

Murdoch has a pretty obvious plan, IMO.

News is pretty fungible in the US, and that makes it difficult to extract real money out of viewers. Murdoch is trying to change that by making his news (Fox, WSJ, etc.) ‘different’, adding value to it. It might be wingnut value, but it’ll be value perceived by the viewer, value enough so that when he throws up his pay wall that he’s promising to do, that his audience won’t shrug their shoulders and say ‘Oh well, MSNBC is good enough’, instead they’ll buy a subscription.

The problem here is AP. So long as they are willing to syndicate their stuff out to the 4 corners, nobody has a competitive advantage because pretty much everyone is pimping the same story. Any story that is similar to AP (ABC, CNN, etc.) might as well just be AP if it comes down to a pay/free choice. So, Murdoch needs to drive his network as far from AP as possible for his plan to work. He needs Glenn Beck and he needs Megyn Kelly and he genuinely needs to poison the news media well here and to bring his audience along, otherwise he’s nothing more than an outlet for google ads, like Kos or BJ or anyone else. In a way, the more MSNBC manages to look liberal by putting out Olbermann and Maddow, the better off Murdoch is – and the more Olbermann allows Murdoch and Fox to play the victim card on behalf of all of those God-fearing, real ‘murcans, the more likely he’ll be able to take them behind the pay wall.

Think of it as a big Jonestown enterprise, but with a $29.95 annual charge rather than Kool-Aid at the end.

I mean, this is it. Do Fox News fans pony up $29.95 - or whatever it will be - in order to ensure their access to Murdoch’s content, which - in many of their OUTRAGED!!! minds - is the only “truth” they’re getting?

Of course they do. And that’s how Murdoch keeps his news biz viable.