The NYT’s subscription strategy. If a gaffe is when somebody accidentally tells the truth, then Gerry Marzorati’s latest comments probably count: During a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood New York conference, Gerald Marzorati, the Times’s assistant managing editor for new media and strategic initiatives, explained why the paper’s print business is still robust.
“We have north of 800,000 subscribers paying north of $700 a year for home delivery,” Marzorati said. “Of course, they don’t seem to know that.” Marzorati went on to become positively disingenuous: “I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they’re literally not understanding what they’re paying,” he said. Well, no. Nothing has changed since I first wrote about this four years ago: even when you’re a subscriber, there’s nowhere on the website telling you what your subscription rate is*. Today, I can tell you — but the NYT nowhere reports — that home delivery costs $11.70 per week in New York, and $14.80 per week nationally. The Times’ Paywall and Newsletter Economics. It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
In early July, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation placed its two London-based “quality” dailies, the Times and Sunday Times, behind a paywall, charging £1 for 24 hours access, or £2 a week (after an introductory £1 for the first month.*) At the same time, News Corp also forbad the UK’s Audit Bureau of Circulations from reporting site traffic*, so that no meaningful measure of the paywall’s effect was available. That situation has now been partially reversed, with News reporting some of its own numbers: they claim 105,000 total transactions for digital content between July and October.* (Several people have wrongly reported this as 105,000 users.
The number of users is smaller, as there can be more than one transaction per user.) News Corp notes that about half of those transactions were one-offs, meaning only about 50,000 transactions in those four months were by people with any commitment to the site longer than a single day. None of this is new. News International publishes paywall figures, claims 105,000 online customers. First figures since paywall went up in July show 105,000 'digital sales' and 100,000 additional registrations from print subscribers News International has released its first figures for subscriptions to the Times and Sunday Times websites since introducing a paywall to the sites five months ago.
According to a release from the group, the Times and Sunday Times have more than 105,000 "paid-for customers to date". This figures includes subscribers to the websites and to the Times' iPad app and Kindle editions. Around half of these are monthly subscribers, News International says, adding that "many of the rest" are either single copy or pay-as-you go sales. There are an additional 100,000 joint digital and print subscribers, who have started a digital subscription since the launch of the new websites or iPad app launch. The publisher is calculating a total paid audience figure of "close to 200,000", which it says allows for some duplication within digital customer sales.