Rupert Murdoch’s plans to impose fees for newspaper websites received a morale boost from research suggesting that as many as 48% of British and American consumers would be willing to pay a few pounds a month for online news.

A study by the Boston Consulting Group found a higher than expected level of willingness to stump up for journalism on the web. Britain and the US ranked lowest among nine countries surveyed, with as many as 66% of Finns, 63% of Germans and 62% of Italians polled declaring themselves open to paying for access to news websites.

At present, only 12% of British readers pay anything for online news – the smallest proportion of any nation in the study. On average, those willing to stump up a fee in the UK say they would be prepared to pay $4 (£2.40) a month – slightly more than the $3 contemplated by American and Australian readers but less than the $7 offered by Italians, $6 cited by Spaniards and $5 offered by German and French consumers.

“The good news is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, consumers are willing to pay for meaningful content,” said John Rose, a senior partner at BCG in New York. “The bad news is that they are not willing to pay much.” Andrew Clark, The Guardian.

A quick straw poll in the office reveals no-one’s willing to pay anything. And here in the UK we do pay something for online news as part of our TV licence – and personally that’s as far as it goes – for all its faults the BBC does a good job – pay anymore no way. The whole thing’s Murdoch’s wishful thinking – that said, Murdoch’s certainly got some tasty assurances from Tory leader David Cameron on crippling the BBC – so we might find ourselves using a different website – but we won’t be paying – Goole News could well be the winner.