TimesSelect Fails to Ignite
About 135,000 people have signed for TimesSelect, the subscription only online service of the New York Times. 20,000 signed up at $40 a year, and 115,000 at $50…that’s $6 million in revenue. That may sound like a lot of money, but we’re talking about the New York Times. Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president, digital operations for The New York Times Company, said this in September:
The goal won’t be met with TimesSelect subscription numbers in the tens of thousands, Nisenholtz said; it needs to be in the hundreds of thousands in the early years, and even more over the long term.
Like I said, it’s doomed to succeed. 115,000 subsrcibers may not be much but if it covers their costs why admit it was an error and pull the plug?