Times Online Readership Down 90% After Paid Subscription

A month after The Times hid its online content behind a paywall, some statistics have suggested it has lost almost 90% of its readership.

Although visitors can see the home page at thetimes.co.uk, as soon as you click on a link you're invited to either sign in or register with the site.  The new arrangements stems from the paper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, who believes that if readers are willing to pay a pound for their morning paper, they should also put their hand in their pocket and pay £2 a week for an online subscription.  To tempt them, a 24 hour trial costs just £1.  Reflecting the paper's international reach, users can also sign up in dollars or euros.

Numbers Down

Inevitably, visitor numbers have fallen, but the paper is hoping to compensate for lost advertising revenue with regular income from subscriptions.  The newspaper industry, which has been hit by falling sales, is watching the experiment closely, as it's far from clear that it will pay off.

The figures proposed by The Guardian suggest a fall in traffic of 90% month on month, meaning only a tenth of readers have stayed loyal to The Times now it has adopted for a paid-for model.  It is, of course, in the rival broadsheet's interest to talk down the paywall, not least because it's hoping to increase its own readership with defectors' from The Times, as this now notorious blog post from its own online editor show.

Journalists Dissatisfied

Interestingly enough, it may well be the The Times' journalists that are more unhappy than its readers.  Speaking on Radio 4 earlier this week, blogger Dan Sabbagh pointed out that many are unhappy that their output is no longer visible online.  Their stories no longer appear in Google News, and can't be shared on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, leaving some of them feeling very cut-off from the online conversation.



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