New York Times considering US$5 monthly Web-access fee

Times Co. is contemplating additional sources of revenue as marketers slow spending on the Internet. Ad sales at the publisher's sites, also including about.com and boston.com, fell 8 percent and 3.5 percent in the first quarter and fourth quarter of 2008 respectively. They gained 6.5 percent last year.

“The question here for consumers is the psychological barrier of now paying when you were getting it for free before, and you're going to lose some readers as a result,” said Ken Doctor, an analyst at Outsell Inc. in Burlingame, California. “The New York Times will also have to evaluate what this means for ad rates as they lose readers.”

Times Co., based in New York, lost 11 cents, or 2.2 percent, to US$4.80 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have fallen 35 percent this year.

The New York Times had an average of 647,695 weekday home delivery subscribers as of the 26 weeks ended March 29, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations data. That doesn't include single-copy sales or third-party sales. Its site is the most visited among news sites, according to ComScore Inc. data.

News Corp.'s Wall Street Journal charges for access to some of its Web site's content and publishers including Hearst Corp. and E.W. Scripps Co. have said they are considering pay models.

Times Co. is selling assets and has cut pay and jobs to save money. First-quarter advertising revenue at the publisher plunged 27 percent, and the company said in April that it expected a similar decline in the second quarter.

The New York Times' site “is considering charging a monthly fee of US$5.00 to access its content, including all its articles, blogs and multimedia,” the survey stated.

In 2007, the New York Times ended a two-year experiment of charging users for some opinion and editorial content. At its peak, 200,000 users paid for the service, called Times Select, and it generated US$10 million a year in revenue, Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said this year in an online question-and-answer session.

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos Respond to this email