Thursday, October 20, 2011

NYT Co. says it now has 324,000 digital subscribers

The New York Times Co. continued to attract paying subscribers to its flagship website in the third quarter, bolstering a new revenue stream that has helped offset a decline in advertising revenue, the company said today.

The publisher now has 324,000 paid subscribers to the various digital editions of the paper, including e-readers and its website, compared to 281,000 at the end of the second quarter, according to this New York Times story. Those figures do not include the 100,000 users who receive access to NYTimes.com free through a sponsorship by Ford Motor.

13 comments:

  1. I assume those numbers don't include people who subscribe to the paper and receive the web edition as part of the deal. I do, I get Sunday only and unlimited NYT web the rest of the time. The day they announced their web pricing plan I became a subscriber (I mean, come on, if you are going to be in journalism you've got to at least supprot the best of the best). I spend a lot of time at the site, and consider my subscription to be 50/50 paper/web. If I chose not to receive the Sunday paper (which I might cancel because of their terrible problems delivering to me (well outside the NYC area)) I would be one of those digi only subscribers, too. Really, you could count the rest of their paper-edition subscribers as digital subscribers, too, and that would quadruple the number of people paying for the web. If they wanted to account that way. I'm sure the bulk of their paper subscribers spend a lot or at least some time on their site - there is a good deal there not in the paper edition, blogs, interactive graphics, etc. I'm surprised they don't talk about those numbers, too.

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  2. This is what happens when you generate must-read content.

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  3. Another example of how CONTENT trumps distribution.

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  4. It's very tempting to jump on that bandwagon. I think NYT and WSJ have something to sell that few local papers can replicate. They are special, in my view, and what they are doing is just not easily repeatable. If you look at NYT revenue, it looks like as soon as next quarter, digital subscription revenue will pass advertising revenue. Gannett, and I suspect nearly everyone else, is nowhere close to that. I know some Gannett papers whose reader satisfaction is GREAT, but I don't think middle-America local community readers will pay anything like what they are paying NYT, even if the local content was flat-out great. Or, looked at another way, I think you could send all the NYT editorial staff to Louisville and still not sell a ton more CJs. Many other factors go into local reading/buying decisions besides just the "quality content" one. Here's one: you can't commute and read at the same time in the vast majority of Gannett markets.

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  5. 10:24 actually makes a good point. If you subscribe to HD you get access to the website. The number we want to see is web subscription only. Anyone have that number?

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  6. Here's part of the answer to your questions; it's from the NYT Co.'s earnings statement. The closest to a web-only figure is the 324,000 subs, but that includes electronic editions.

    Paid digital subscribers to The Times digital subscription packages, e-readers and replica editions totaled approximately 324,000 as of the end of the third quarter of 2011. In addition to these paid digital subscribers, as of the end of the third quarter of 2011, The Times had more than 100,000 highly engaged users sponsored by Ford Motor Company's luxury brand, Lincoln, who have free access to NYTimes.com and smartphone apps until the end of the year, and approximately 800,000 home-delivery subscribers with linked digital accounts, who receive free digital access. In total, The Times had paid and sponsored relationships with over 1.2 million digital users as of the end of the third quarter of 2011.

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  7. Our competitors take the lead and move way ahead of USA TODAY and Gannett. Meanwhile, Gannett's collective thumb is nestled snuggly up their ass....as usual.

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  8. We're monitoring the situation.

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  9. EXCUSE ME 4:48.... Gannett leads the pack on executive compensation so I think an apology is order.

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  10. Jim good answer but what we need to get to is the number of folks who pay for access to the NYT web site only. If that number is significant then people's habits really are changing. The bundled figure is great buy what we want is the number of folks that think "I want to pay for the right to access this information"

    Probably can't get it but that is the true barometer

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  11. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  12. 6:25 Here's some more information that may answer your question. In the NYT Co.'s second-quarter earnings report, the company said:

    "Paid digital subscribers to e-readers and replica editions totaled approximately 57,000."

    Assuming that figure hasn't changed, the current number of web-only paid subscribers would be 267,000.

    I get that number by subtracting the 57,000 e-reader/replica edition subscribers from the 324,000 overall digital editions figure reported today.

    To reiterate, that 267,000 does not include the more than 100,000 web-only subscriptions underwritten by Ford Motor. And, of course, it doesn't include the 800,000 digital subscriptions that are linked to home-delivery print subscriptions.

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  13. 267,000 web-only subs is still about 266,000 more than at least one of the three paywall papers is getting.

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