Newscorp loses 95.5% of Times online readers after erecting a paywall

[BurtWorm]

Ha ha! :P

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/11/thetimescouk_readership_goes_f.html

TheTimes.co.uk Readership Goes From 20 Million a Month to 105,000 After Pay Wall

Only 105,000 people paid either for one-pound day passes or two-pound monthly passes to view content on the website of the London Times, down from 20 million monthly users back before the pay wall was erected this summer. That's a drop down to 0.5 percent, and the number also includes subscribers who have bought access through the iPad. Parent company News Corp. is touting this as a victory for pay walls, but British skeptics aren't so sure. That's a tiny amount of money to pull in for the massive hit in eyes that the site has taken, and the drastic drop-off of readers has no doubt affected advertising. Still, "over a couple of a million people look at the front page of The Times," editor Jeremy Harding told BBC Radio 4. "We were engaged in a quite suicidal form of economics, which was giving our news away for free. We haven’t been cut off from the conversation, because the media works as a huge echo chamber and readers are commenting on our stories in a more engaging way."

[Skink]

1. If you pay monthly for an esubscription you should get it without ads.

If you read the online edition without paying you should accept the ads. I like the ads. It seems like the retail rate only covers distribution costs.

[Scurrilous]

2. LOL

:thumbsup:

[rbixby]

3. I believe its actually 99.5% of readers NT

[BurtWorm]

4. You're right.

Finger slip.

:toast: