Numbers Behind TimesSelect Refine the News Picture
Outsell affiliate analyst Ken Doctor notes that last week was full of terrifying headlines for the newspaper industry: Circulation drops 2.6 percent nationally! E-Papers will replace print – soon! Google Automat revealed! Against that background, a report about the progress of TimesSelect provided good punctuation.
The New York Times reported that the number of TimesSelect subscribers has surpassed 270,000. It said about half were online-only. With TimesSelect priced at $49.95 a year, that gives the Times annualized revenue somewhere north of $5 million, allowing for seen and unseen discounting and churn. Martin Nisenholtz, head of the Times’ digital operations, had set a target of $10 million in revenue by the end of 2006, so the early numbers appear encouraging.
Combine that number with the Wall Street Journal Online