16 August 2010 | Author: J. Morton News Editor
The Times, and parent company News Corp, may have to chalk up their move to a paid-content online subscription system as a misstep, as thetimes.co.uk has seen a full 1.2 million user decrease since the days of the free-for-all timesonline.co.uk.
Before implementing a voluntary, then mandatory and paid-for registration in May of this year, the newspaper's online outlet had a 2.79 million-strong readership, but recent figures from ComScore have indicated that number was cut almost in half for July at 1.61 million.
In addition, visitors' average time on the site has fallen from 7.6 minutes in May to 4 minutes in July, with a pit stop at 5.8 minutes in June.
News Corp head honcho Rupert Murdoch - who is alleged to not maintain even an email account - sounded positive for the newspaper's new direction after launching the programme in May of this year.
"With our paywall around the Times, we have had an encouraging number of people subscribing at a good price," Murdoch said while discussing News Corp's fourth quarter earnings. "We're not going to release those numbers at this stage, but we think we're on the right strategy and we think it's going well."
News Corp refused to comment on the recently released figures, but the data suggests the number of subscribers to thetimes.co.uk is far less than the 1.6 million visitors recorded for July, as many of these may have accessed the homepage, then left quickly, bringing down the average stay time.
However, trends for online journalism overall followed a similar, albeit less drastic, trajectory for the month, with The Telegraph and Guardian both recording losses of online readership.
The Mail Online and The Independent, on the other hand, strengthened to 9 million and 3.54 million unique visitors, respectively.
Will the Times' pay-to-play experiment sink the ship?
The Times, and parent company News Corp, may have to chalk up their move to a paid-content online subscription system as a misstep, as thetimes.co.uk has seen a full 1.2 million user decrease since the days of the free-for-all timesonline.co.uk.Before implementing a voluntary, then mandatory and paid-for registration in May of this year, the newspaper's online outlet had a 2.79 million-strong readership, but recent figures from ComScore have indicated that number was cut almost in half for July at 1.61 million.
In addition, visitors' average time on the site has fallen from 7.6 minutes in May to 4 minutes in July, with a pit stop at 5.8 minutes in June.
News Corp head honcho Rupert Murdoch - who is alleged to not maintain even an email account - sounded positive for the newspaper's new direction after launching the programme in May of this year.
"With our paywall around the Times, we have had an encouraging number of people subscribing at a good price," Murdoch said while discussing News Corp's fourth quarter earnings. "We're not going to release those numbers at this stage, but we think we're on the right strategy and we think it's going well."
News Corp refused to comment on the recently released figures, but the data suggests the number of subscribers to thetimes.co.uk is far less than the 1.6 million visitors recorded for July, as many of these may have accessed the homepage, then left quickly, bringing down the average stay time.
However, trends for online journalism overall followed a similar, albeit less drastic, trajectory for the month, with The Telegraph and Guardian both recording losses of online readership.
The Mail Online and The Independent, on the other hand, strengthened to 9 million and 3.54 million unique visitors, respectively.
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