Comments on: Los Angeles Times To Add Paywall

By: robelroy

robelroy — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:15:40 +0000

The JSO paywall has been up for less than two months. Not one year.

By: Valerie

Valerie — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 16:45:48 +0000

Congratulations, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has just brought in $422,000 of subscription revenue in a year. Why, in LA that number could be $2M. If that is enough to offset the losses in digital advertising, their reps are doing a lousy job of selling.

Oh, and does anyone see the irony of referencing the appeal of a paywall’ed paper’s Green Bay Packers coverage, by a paper whose city can’t support an NFL team?

By: MLKlivesInUs

MLKlivesInUs — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:19:53 +0000

If the L.A. Times thinks it is going to reap much in “metered” paywall revenue from the Internet, they’re sadly delusional — much like their strip-mall owner Sam Zell, who is desperate to squeeze every nickel he can out of his Tribune newspaper properties after taking the company “private” and then through bankruptcy over the last few years. Too bad Zell couldn’t have the vision to think of an “advertiser-supported” model for L.A. Times online — just following Gannett and New York Times to the perceived “paywall” trough is not necessarily going to bring in much more revenue for the L.A. Times.

The next thing Zell will try to do is take all of the Tribune TV stations — such as KTLA-TV in Los Angeles and WGN-TV in Chicago — and try to make them subscriber-based “premium cable networks” to go up against HBO and Showtime. Zell is to media what Nero was to Rome!