R.I.P TimesSelect?

from the good-riddance dept

Tue, Aug 7th 2007 8:10am — Joseph Weisenthal

The New York Times' plan to lock up its premium content known as TimesSelect was a terrible idea to begin with, and every piece of data that came out about it merely confirmed that the program was unpopular. Sure, the company drew a modest amount of revenue from it, but in exchange it severely limited the exposure of its top columnists, not to mention all of the foregone advertising revenue from the lower traffic. Now comes word that the paper is set to pull the plug on the offering (via Romenesko). At this point, it's still just a rumor, but either way, the company has to arrive at this conclusion eventually. Newspaper publishers cling to the dream that one day all of their content will be safely behind paywalls and that readers will suddenly wake up with an allergy to money and favor this model. But the trend is only moving one direction, as there's even talk about the Wall Street Journal, the one paper that's had a moderate amount of success charging for access, making its content free.

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Filed Under: media, newspapers, timesselect
Companies: new york times

8 Comments

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dorpus, 7 Aug 2007 @ 8:33am

No, keep it
Who wants to read their whiney, misleading, amateurish columnists? It's better to let them fade into oblivion.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Aug 2007 @ 8:48am

Re: No, keep it
if only you could do the same, dorpus...if only you could do the same
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dorpus, 7 Aug 2007 @ 8:50am

Re: Re: No, keep it
Oh, you mean Techdirt doesn't already have a Techdirt Select, on which it makes its living? Haha.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Aug 2007 @ 9:11am

Re: Re: No, keep it
As long as blogs exists there will always be dorpus...
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Haywood, 7 Aug 2007 @ 9:18am

I thought it was just me
I have always held one rule sacred; surf till they ask for money then hit back or home. I used to have the same rule for registration, even free registration, until I discovered bugmenot.
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Charles Griswold, 7 Aug 2007 @ 11:12am

Re: Re: Re: No, keep it
As long as blogs exists there will always be dorpus...
So, he's kind of the Eternal Champion of annoyingly off-topic comments? It hurts to think about it.
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Dosquatch, 7 Aug 2007 @ 4:01pm

Re: No, keep it
erm... methinks "champion" overstates his credentials a bit. He's more of the dashboard bobblehead of annoyingly off-topic comments. For true world class champions, you need only spend some time sifting through the alt.net.kooks archives.
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Amy Alkon, 7 Aug 2007 @ 9:38pm

Kaus was right
Mickey Kaus got it exactly right about Times Select. I pay for it because I blog and write a newspaper column, and sometimes need access, but I've typically been reluctant to link to TS pieces on my blog since I know many (probably most) of my readers can't access them...or the ads on the NYT site they might've seen had I linked to them. No linkee, no lunchee...a pity it took the NYT this long to figure it out.
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