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Influential analyst would like to see you pay a little more for NYT

avatar by Published Oct. 21, 2011 3:30 pm Updated Oct. 24, 2011 6:44 am

SeekingAlpha.com
In the Q-and-A portion of yesterday’s New York Times Co. earnings call, veteran media analyst Edward Atorino told the paper’s execs [emphasis added]:

Regarding the pricing of the digital product, the Sunday package is very strong. And I hear a lot of people get the Sunday package because they get the online for free. Have you thought about charging those folks $1 a week or something? You’d get an awful lot of additional dollars right to the bottom line. Or generally, price — charge the print subscriber a little bit to get the online.

We can rest easy, as Times president/general manager Scott Heekin-Canedy told the analyst that “we’re very happy with our pricing program as it currently stands.”

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  • Reykjavik

    Just shows how little the “veteran media analyst” knows. The Times is getting a nice pop to its weekend — particularly Sunday — circulation numbers by virtue of this deal (which incidentally, isn’t as sweet after the introductionary period). As Times likely makes 40%+ of its print ad revenue from Sunday, and those rates are CPM based, goosing the circ has a much bigger impact on ad dollars than it would on digital revenue. If they were able to get 100K people to pay $1 more per week, that’s only $5 million per year, which is a rounding error compared to ad revenue.