Anything is possible. Much more likely that Murdoch thought that his hold over the political class, now partly broken, would get him through the worst of it.
Most of us would have betted on that.
There may have been a plan kicking around to cut costs by running a 7 days newspaper, but until a week ago the News of the World was highly successful and extremely profitable.
It was the Milly Dowler that did it for the public. We had seen endless loops of her ironing and playing the saxaphone and that brought it home. We did not really care about well off footballers and entertainers. Hugh Grant was unexpectedly eloquent; the paying of the police underlined how serious the whole Murdoch relationship was (not just rogue individuals), a rotten empire.