The New York Times is testing a price point of $5 a month for access to nytimes.com, with a 50 percent discount for print subscribers.
The
Times e-mailed a survey to print subscribers Thursday afternoon inviting their reaction to that pricing plan and asking a range of questions about online pricing.
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A portion of the Times' survey on charging for access to its Web site. (Click image for larger version.) |
New York Times Co. spokeswoman Catherine Mathis confirmed in a telephone interview that the
Times had sent the survey, but said no timetable has been set for a decision and no decisions have been made about online pricing.
(
The Independent reported that its Friday editions
will quote a Times executive as telling the newspaper that The Times will choose between "metered" and "membership" models. The UK paper said Scott Heekin-Canedy, president and general manager of The New York Times Media Group, said in an interview that a decision will be made by next month.)
The survey distributed Thursday reads: "The New York Times website, nytimes.com, is considering charging a monthly fee of $5.00 to access its content, including all its articles, blogs and multimedia. All of this content is currently available for free.
"When answering the following questions, please think about whether you would be willing to pay for continued unlimited access to nytimes.com.
"How likely would you be to pay a $2.50 monthly fee -- which would be a 50% discount for home delivery subscribers -- for continued, unlimited access to nytimes.com?"
"The one thing I advise people on this is that we've got a very large [online] revenue stream," Mathis said. "We looked at 30 different companies -- Weight Watchers, ESPN, Consumer Reports -- to see how much money is being generated from Web sites. What we saw is that we're doing a pretty good job monetizing content with advertising."
Of $352 million in digital revenue reported by the Times Co. in 2008, about $237 million was generated by its newspaper sites.
"People talk about how we've got to charge for content. We already do have a revenue stream for advertising, and the two are related. You start charging and it can affect the other," Mathis said.
She noted that the
Times previously generated $10 million in annual revenues for Times Select.
The survey asks print subscribers if a fee for online access would affect their print subscriptions.
Offering respondents a range of choices from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree," the survey also seeks to measure attitudes about these assertions:
- I think it is wrong for The New York Times to charge anyone for access to nytimes.com.
- I would pay for access to nytimes.com because it offers more than The New York Times print newspaper.
- I think that as long as subscribers get a discount, charging them for access to nytimes.com is fair.
- I would pay for access to nytimes.com because it offers valuable content and features I can't get anywhere else.
- I would gladly pay for access to nytimes.com in order to support the Times' quality journalism.
Did anyone else, upon reading the first "assertion" -- I...
