New York Times: Comedy Podcast Inside News Corp. Feasts on a Scandal
Monday, 22 August 2011, 16:21
"As some Murdoch-owned media properties chose to minimize the unfolding scandal, [The Bugle producer Chris] Skinner and the pair of comedians behind the podcast, Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver, went straight for the jugular. The Bugle, among the mo…
Press Gazette: Facebook and Twitter gagged by new injunction
Friday, 13 May 2011, 10:59
"An ‘door-stepping order’ banning the media from contacting 65 people in a right-to-life case was lifted yesterday – but a new order was imposed banning the publication of information on Facebook and Twitter. … The order banning the publicat…
paidContent:UK: The Times Gains New Subscribers With Groupon Discount
Tuesday, 26 April 2011, 11:27
Robert Andrews: "Most importantly, the subscriptions are set to continue at the standard rate after the July 29 end of the discounted period, meaning The Times will hold on to some of those new subscribers."
paidContent:UK: UK Times Plans Upgrade To Its ‘Berlin Wall’
Friday, 25 March 2011, 22:48
"The Times is planning some changes to its paid digital model that could lead to more nuanced additions to its current hard in-or-out system. … Right now, this is at the “gossip” stage. And The Times’ digital editorial director Tom Whitwel…
New York Times: Will James Murdoch Ride a Sky Broadcasting Deal to the Top?
Thursday, 24 February 2011, 11:20
"[Those] who know James Murdoch often note that he does not relish the newspaper culture the way his father does. He seems to take no delight in the company of reporters and in the sort of gossip that permeates the newspaper world and that his fat…
The Economist: Bold newspapers: The crucible of print
Tuesday, 11 January 2011, 11:53
"The strategies being pursued by News Corporation, the Daily Mail and General Trust and Lebedev Holdings rest on distinct assumptions about what readers want, what they will pay for, and the future of advertising. It is highly unlikely that all th…
Press Gazette: Guardian memo: 54,000 a month behind Times paywall
Thursday, 9 December 2010, 11:49
"New research from Experian Hitwise has been used by The Guardian to suggests that 54,000 people a month are accessing content behind the paywall of The Times and Sunday Times. The research was commissioned by Guardian News and Media and published internally on the company’s intranet yesterday."
Media Guardian: Facebook generates 10% of Mail Online’s UK traffic
Monday, 15 November 2010, 18:55
"Martin Clarke, the Daily Mail executive who runs Mail Online, revealed today that 10% of the website's UK traffic is generated by referrals from Facebook, a 'gigantic free marketing engine'. … Clarke also claimed Mail Online users are more engaged than the paying customers who visit thetimes.co.uk."
MediaWeek: Three customers get to bypass News International paywall
Monday, 15 November 2010, 18:14
Very interesting. What other service providers might bundle Times content to add value to network access? "Three, the telecoms company, is offering its mobile broadband customers three months free access to News International's sites for The Times and The Sunday Times from today."
Press Gazette: Jim Chisholm: Times paywall will fail
Monday, 15 November 2010, 12:56
Chisholm: “There’s no statistical evidence that the internet has damaged circulation any more than a whole range of other factors. I’ve not been able to find any evidence of this anywhere, and I’ve studied this in a dozen different markets.”
Brand Republic: The Times and Sunday Times attract 75% of online audience from UK
Wednesday, 10 November 2010, 17:50
"The proportion of people in the UK accessing the Times online is said to have more than doubled since News International erected its paywall in June. …. In addition, the frequency with which users are accessing News International’s online content has risen six-fold, from an average of once every two weeks, to three times a week on the new sites."
Virtual Economics: News Corp’s paywall is about News Corp, not the Times
Thursday, 4 November 2010, 11:44
Seamus McCauley has an interesting theory: "The Times paywall … is not about directly monetising the Times but about bundling the Times with News Corp's other services, notably broadband but also TV and telephony, to decrease churn and add customers to the valuable has a very growth part of the business. … With BskyB running an ARPU of £508, if fewer than 30,000 people make the decision to move to (or stay with) Sky because they get the Times online bundled in, News Corp's paywall initiative breaks even. If 200,000 do that's the annual losses of the newspaper operation covered too."
Reuters: Newspaper paywall datapoint of the day
Wednesday, 3 November 2010, 18:33
Felix Salmon: "The fact is that insofar as printed newspapers compete with the web, they compete with everything on the web, not just their own sites. No general-interest publication can prevent its print circulation from declining simply by walling itself off from the web. Which is why the NYT paywall is so silly: millions of dollars in development costs, and enormous amounts of important management time, devoted to something which will probably end up grossing no more than $20 million or so a year. That compares to $78.3 million in internet advertising revenues in the last quarter alone."
Paidcontent:UK: Times’ Audience Numbers Struggle, Subscriptions Offer Hope
Tuesday, 2 November 2010, 11:31
Robert Andrews: "The big question, to us on the outside, is whether the reduction in advertising-exposed eyeballs associated with a traffic drop of this scale is, or will, being made up by paying customers. But we didn’t even know how much News International was making from digital before the switch; the publisher doesn’t break it out."
