Comments on: Chart: Comparing The Two Timeses’ Subscriber Growth

By: Andrew Birmingham

Andrew Birmingham — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:53:39 +0000

Two points; the NYT is much more a global brand than The Times. And in its local market, The Times (UK) runs up hard against the BBC. In the US the public broadcaster does not provide the equivalent competitive tension.

By: Cynthia Typaldos

Cynthia Typaldos — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 20:55:47 +0000

The average age and various other statistics around these numbers would be very interesting.

By: Robert Andrews

Robert Andrews — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:46:34 +0000

I haven’t gone back to the publishers specifically on your questions, but I believe each refers to actual active subscribers, at the time of the disclosure, at whatever price point above zero.
I don’t think it’s at all an invalid tactic to sign people up on a pricepoint like £0.99 for an initial period, since those entry pricepoints soon kick in to a proper full-price subscription. Same goes for the subscriptions The Times added through a Groupon discount (http://cnt.to/o7r), since those, too, will auto-renew at full price.
I’m sure the publishers do identify the various tiers in-house, but I think it’s also directionally valid to refer only to one “subscribers” tier.

Thanks for your discussion.

By: Stephen Thompson

Stephen Thompson — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:30:09 +0000

Good question on whether those on initial promotions are counted and unique identification. I’m pretty sure in their back-end they will have applied unique identifiers for each type of subscription offered to each individual (least I really hope so!).
Also from looking at the graph its also not possible to tell if these are total cumulative acquisitions or live subscribers at each point in time (@robertandrews:disqus are you able to clarify?)

By: Toni Goeller

Toni Goeller — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:55:17 +0000

These numbers look simple, hence they lack a few explanations.
Are first week (1 pound at The Times) or first 4 week (99 cent at New York Times) subscribers counted if they do not extend beyond the price hike (2 pound a week for The Times, 15/20/35 dollars for the NYT)?
If yes, we should ask about the number of long-term subscribers and about the unique identification of a short-term subscriber (email, name, address, means of payment). Identification is not so easy in the online world as with good old paper delivery.
Ceterum censeo: Your kids do not subscribe to newspapers. At most, they will pay a few cents for individual articles.

By: Stephen Thompson

Stephen Thompson — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:05:08 +0000

It would be interesting to understand more about the profiles / demographics of these seemingly small but significant subscriber bases. I suspect these are pretty affluent and potentially influential people making then attractive to customers to have on board in the long run.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:54:40 +0000

Try scaling those numbers according to the relative Alexa/ComScore/whatever stats, that will give you a more accurate picture of their comparative success.

By: Greg Golebiewski @znakit

Greg Golebiewski @znakit — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:50:03 +0000

Then you have to consider an incredible amount of money and effort by the NYT to market its plan. The result: go on twitter, for example, and search for paywall; there a thousands of tweets about the NYT’s meter or articles behind the paywall, and only a handful of references to the Times

Not to mention that the press coverage of Times’ paywall was from the begging very negative.