NY Times to Make TimesSelect Free
August 8, 2007
Barry Graubart weighs in on the decision at the New York Times to Make TimesSelect free.
The Times has decided to stop charging a fee for its TimesSelect product. TimesSelect, which includes the Times Columnists and OpEd pieces, is free to print subscribers and costs $95 per year for others. There are approximately 220,000 paid TimesSelect subscribers, representing roughly $21 million in annual revenue. It also provides a perceived benefit to print subscribers… While I don’t know if the Times will recoup that revenue simply from serving ads on the OpEd pages, this is clearly the right thing to do. Putting a wall up around Times columnists simply resulted in reducing the influence of the Times editorial page. In addition to limiting access for direct browsers, it also dramatically reduced the “pass-along” potential of Times content. Once the walls are down, I’d expect their editorial columns to often be at the top of the “most emailed” lists and also receive numerous links from bloggers, Facebook pages and more.
All good thoughts from Barry, so do read his entire entry. I just want to know if the crossword puzzle will now be available free.
Posted by Bill Trippe at August 8, 2007 10:07 AM
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