Newsday Drops Its Paywall For 'At Least One Month'

from the but-paywalls-work-great,-right? dept

Remember how excited Cablevision was about putting up that paywall for Newsday, the newspaper that it owned? While the company claimed that the purpose of the paywall was really all about keeping Cablevision customers from deserting in favor of Verizon, it was still rather stunning to find out after three months, the company had secured a grand total of 35 paywall subscribers who weren't just grandfathered in as Cablevision TV subscribers. More recently it also came out that ad revenues for the paper had dropped off significantly as well, in part because of the much, much smaller audience. So it's interesting to note (via Romenesko) that Newsday has miraculously decided to drop its paywall "for at least a month." Seems like a pretty clear admission of failure.

Filed Under: journalism, newsday, paywalls
Companies: cablevision

After Three Months, Newsday's Grand Paywall Experiment Has 35 Paying Customers. Yes, 35.

from the no,-really.--35 dept

Like many, we were amazed at the decision by Cablevision to try charging $5 per week (yes, per week) for its paywall to Newsday content online. The newspaper itself is not particularly good and doesn't really provide all that much in the way of excess value compared to what else is out there. And $5/week is extremely high. Yet, even so, we're a bit surprised that after three months, the paper has a grand total of 35 paying subscribers. Yes, 35. I'm sure that extra $175/week comes in quite handy. Oh right, they also saved on the salary of their popular columnist who quit, rather than have his work hidden behind a paywall.

To be fair, Cablevision never really seemed to view this much as a direct source of revenue, but rather as a churn reducer for its cable subscribers, who can get to the Newsday website for free. Still I doubt there are really that many people who decide not to drop their Optimum Cable service just because they get free access to Newsday online. I can't imagine that the $175, in any way, makes up for the drop in visitors and ad revenue. According to multiple online tools, the general estimate is that Newday has lost 50% of its web traffic since putting up the paywall. And in return, they get $175/week. Nice one, Cablevision.

Filed Under: newsday, paywall, subscriptions
Companies: cablevision, newsday