Time to Pay For The Times?
– Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins
How good, really, is The New York Times?
Or more specifically, how good is The New York Times website?
Conventional wisdom is very strong that most people will not pay for news on the Internet. There is simply too much of news available for free.
The Wall Street Journal is seen as an exception, because it offers a specialized premium product that people for which readers will fork over $1.99 a week, although it still gives away a ton of content for free on its home page.
The New York Times has far more readers online than subscribers to the paper version (12.4 million vs 800,000) [According to comScore, NYTimes.com attracted 12.4 million U.S. visitors in December, 2009, down from 15.4 million in September, 2009.]
I am an avid reader of the Times, but I have never bought the paper more than a dozen times in my entire life. (Granted, I often had access to free copies in the newsrooms I’ve worked in, but even many newsrooms no longer feel it’s essential to subscribe to the paper version.)
The
cost of newsprint, ink, production, and delivery already exceeds the
revenue brought in from paid subscribers to the paper version.
Subscribers would be doing the Times a favor by switch to a
paid online version, even though currently, print ads are far more
valuable to the paper than web ads. (The website businessinsider.com
estimates that for what the Times spend on producing the print version
it could send each of its paper subscribers a brand new Amazon
Kindle!) And as the Times tries to “monetize” its web
product, it is understandably worried about jeopardizing its web
advertising. While Internet ads can’t replace print ads
dollar-for-dollar, they do add up. Still, if the Times new
experiment in charging “heavy users” of its website drives away too many
online readers, it could backfire. The small amount of money from
paying web customers could be offset by lower rates for ads, producing a
net loss.
So it is a delicate balancing act, and the Times
is being cagey by not saying just how much “heavy use” would trigger a
fee, presumably so it can try to calibrate the trigger point to maximize
income while minimizing reader flight. The problem with this business
model is it plays right into the tendencies of most internet news
consumers to take what is free and ignore the rest.You would think the Times would have figured that out from its last flirtation with charging for content, in which certain premium features and columnists were available only to paid subscribers. Like most web readers, I just skipped Maureen Dowd, unless I saw her column reposted somewhere else for free.
The Times has one of the best news sites on the web. In fact, it may be THE best. If it wants to make money from it, it should have the confidence of its convictions, and charge for access to EVERYTHING. Get it ALL for one low price, or live with NOTHING.
The site is good enough, that I wager many online readers would pay, if the fee were nominal enough, say $10-$12 bucks year. If online readership dropped in half, to say six million, that would still produce more than $70 million in annual revenue.
Every experiment in charging for PART of a news site has failed, no matter how good the product. It’s a variation on the old adage, “Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?” Only in this case the maxim should read “Why buy the cow, if you get enough milk to make do?”
It’s easy for me to say because I don’t have to risk the fortunes of one of the world’s great papers, but if I were running things as the Times, I would put the entire website behind a pay wall.
I wouldn’t try that business with many websites, in fact I’m convinced AP’s efforts to charge for its content will backfire. But the Times is good enough to command a premium, if the price is low enough and payments are easy to make. The Times should read an article in today’s paper (which I read for free) “With Kindle, the Best Sellers Don’t Need to Sell”
The key quote: “Free is not a business model,” attributed to Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins.
The Times should consider selling subscriptions on prepaid cards, like iTunes. Imagine picking up a year’s subscription for say, $11.99, from a rack of other gift cards? Or allowing subscribers to TEXT NYTimes to a special number?
Call me crazy, but I think it’s an idea whose time has come.
Tags: New York Times, Pay Wall
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