US: NY TimesSelect has 156,000 web-only subscribers

Posted by Dominique Lewis Tuohy on January 25, 2006 at 11:34 AM

The New York Times has announced that its paid-for web service TimesSelect, which gives access to all news sport and op-ed columns as well as video presentations and archives, now has 390,000 subscribers. 156,000 of these are web only subscribers who pay either a monthly fee of $7.95 or a yearly fee of $49.95. The paper has announced that a new discounted yearly fee of $24.95 will be offered to college students and faculty.

When figures were released by the Times in November and December approximately 50% of TimesSelect subscribers were web only. The new figures show this has changed to 40% web only. (see previous postings here and here).

According to past figures, the Times signed up about 135,000 web-only subscribers in its first six weeks. Since that announcement at the beginning of November, the following eleven weeks have only witnessed a 21,000 increase in web-only readers, suggesting that subscriptions are plateau-ing. The new promotion for students and professors could bring some new eyes to TimesSelect but many universities already provide LexisNexis which lists all daily Times articles anyway.

Still, the numbers are better than most critics, and apparently NYT, predicted from the beginning. Diane McNulty, spokeswoman for the Times, commented, "It is a little bit ahead of what we thought [would happen by now] … People who try it seem to like it."

Source: Editor and Publisher

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