New York Times' Print and Digital Units Reportedly Disagreeing Over iPad Content Pricing

[joemama]

I hope the NYTs is reading these comments to get an idea of what "everyday" people are thinking about pay-for-content idea.

Having worked for a large print newsweekly years ago, I found their model to work well: Have advertisers pay for the subscriptions.

How can you ask people to pay for digital content which will be filled with ads everywhere? Why not push 2 models:

1.) Get it free online just like it is now, with ads all over, from a regular browser.

or

2.) pay $5/month for the same content, without ads, and offer some more "enhanced" content - that can only be viewed on the iPad.

You have to accept change.

 

[vini-vidi-vici]

I hate to bring politics into this...

Then don't.

 

[marksman]

I can get my news from any number of sources and sites online:

CNN.com
Google News
Reuters
BBC News Online
USATODAY.com
MSNBC
TIME.com
Yahoo News
The Associated Press Mobile
World News
CBS News
ABC News
NBC news
Fox News
Bloomberg.com
Forbes.com

Why would I or anyone else for that matter pay $30, $20, or $10 for day old news and columns/articles that are no better than any of the free sites I just listed? NYT can shove it, $10 should be the max they are going to price it at. What year do they think we are living in? This is not 1984 when the newspaper was important and a big source for news.

Because different news sources can provide different qualities of content.

The NYT can provide different content, potentially from other services, and stand out in relation to just providing AP-centric news.

There is still a place in this word for writing and investigative journalism. Not every piece of readable news is just a reprinted press release or an apwire report.

 

[cmaier]

3G is the point.
WiFi only has limited uses.
Can't get reliable WiFi on a half hour urban train trip each way too and from work can ya?

Ok, but so what? You brought up 3G as somehow being a required cost in the subscription. It's not, any more than it is for a physical subscription.

 

[TheAshMan]

I can't believe most of the posts that I am reading here. First of all, news will not be free forever. While you can certainly cruise over to a number of free websites to get your news today, that won't be possible in the future. The same people who believe that downloading pirated music is OK will continue to believe that news is free. Someone has to pay for a quality reporter and analyst. If you want my 12 year old daughter to rehash your news, fine. That will be free. If you want to read a quality newspaper, then you should be prepared to pay for it.

Amen, Brother. You are right on. You don't get something for nothing.

 

[Neutral Gamer]

Get that CALCULATOR out...

http://homedelivery.nytimes.com/HDS...bscriptionAcquisition&ExternalMediaCode=W31XX

Thanks for the reply Jason.

So, let's calculate the total cost for a year's subscription for the current PAPER edition:

• It's $5.85 a week for the first 12 weeks (50% introductory period)
  = $70.20
  
• For the remaining 40 weeks it's $11.70
  = $468.00
  
• TOTAL = $538.20
• PER MONTH = $44.85

So $44.85 for the paper edition. Considering lower costs of distribution and printing, let's knock off 50% and we end up with $22.42. That makes $10 pretty damn cheap and $30 too expensive.

Of course this assumes that you're a current NYT subscriber or someone who buys the paper on a regular basis. By charging $10 I think they can appeal to a new audience: those who don't like to go out and buy papers and those who find large broadsheets difficult to read (especially small text and large paper size). It'd also be cool if you could download the entire paper or set of papers to the iPad to view in an "offline mode" when you're out and about.

In reality they should charge $9.99 (as it sounds so much less than $10) for the weekday editions and probably $12.99 to include the weekend. Both prices seem pretty reasonable to me.

Well, that's just my take. I'd like to know what others think and whether my calculations are sound. Cheers.

 

[gravescp]

Jobs should be focused on two things

1- digital textbooks for students
This is huge, there is a need for this. Students would rather carry around an ipad then a ton of heavy textbooks, not to mention looking up information would be a breeze. Possibilities are endless.

2- Gaming
iPhone proved that apple can provide excellent video game content on a small device. They would do better on a 10 inch device.

Paying for news you could google for free = epic fail.
There is no need for this.

I would expect the current iphone apps that offer digital textbooks to go crazy with this, we don't need apple to do this the textbook publishers are already ready to launch their 'kindle' apps ASAP

 

[gkarris]

Hey everyone!

Apple and now AT&T (with the iPhone) is making TONS of money, even in these hard economic times....

Now WE CAN TOO! $30/month for our content it is!

Rich Apple users will pay!!!

There's an App for that!

(LOL)

 

[flybynite]

I currently pay $21/month for a delivered version of the LA Times. I am sure that the NYT is more than this - probably close to $30/month. I have no problem paying for my LA Times subscription in print, why would I object to paying a similar fee to receive it delivered digitally?

I agree. Why is everyone aghast at $30/month for the full 7-day a week subscription? Home delivery is almost $60/month after a 12-month intro period.

This is what NYT should do:

Charge $25/month, but give away a free iPad with a 2-year subscription. Sunday-only or 1-year subscribers will get an iPad for $200.

 

[Thex1138]

Ok, but so what? You brought up 3G as somehow being a required cost in the subscription. It's not, any more than it is for a physical subscription.

Yep, because as demand for content is dictating to the market, print is dead, people want delivered content on demand. WiFi will not deliver on demand.
Therefore to meet the instant demand and demand on mobile infrastructure, 3G is one mobile solution. If consumers want this content wherever they are then they'll want 3G.

Post: The word required was never used, nor implied... Simply stated.

 

[talkingnewmedia]

I hope the NYTs is reading these comments to get an idea of what "everyday" people are thinking about pay-for-content idea.

Clearly the story derived from a leak, the guy who wrote the story, Ryan Tate who writes the Valleywag column for Gawker, would not be in a position to know directly. My guess would be that one of the interactive guys wants to make the circulation people look bad -- generally an easy thing to do.

As for pricing: sure, everybody wants free, but at some point there needs to be a revenue model. The price to produce a tablet edition will not be zero -- the Times will have to hire a team if they are to do a good job. (After all, even Wired has a tablet team now.)

$10 a month seems reasonable -- assuming a tablet team comes up with good design and multimedia features.

 

[marksman]

As someone who buys internet advertising for a living, I have to agree that a lot of sites simply will not continue to exist on the pay ad only model.

The advantage for advertising online has always been with the advertiser, since the first ad banner went live. It is still that way. The place you want to be online is buying the advertising rather than selling it.

And that is the problem for a lot of websites and their existence. If they can't come up with sustainable business models that work with advertising they have to come up with new models or hybrids of the existing models mixed with something new.

More and more people are running ad blockers, which is a pretty dumb thing to do. You run ad blocker so you never see any ads, so there is never any chance you do anything that would help support the site financially which means the site has no choice but to charge you for the content. The content providers are not the only ones not thinking straight. A lot of the consumers are also thinking about it wrong.

You can't have an expectation of never seeing any ads AND never paying for any content. The same come-to-jesus meeting will happen in television as well, because of DVRS. You can't have "free" tv, and nobody ever sees an actual commercial.

Personally I don't block ads ever. The problem with me is though, I am fairly blind to them, because I have seen every ad there is because that is what I do. So the chance of me ever clicking on one is pretty much zero. I at least allow for that chance to happen though. Which other people don't when they use things like ad blockers.

People saying someone else will just do it for free. Nobody is going to do anything for free on any large scale when you talk about viable news sources. It ultimately costs them all time and money, and most of them will want to recoup that and maybe some extra. I don't think anyone should feel required to pay for anything they don't want, but if you want content to remain free/inexpesnive online, then you need to actively support appropriate advertisers so it is worth their while to continue to pay the money that keeps a site running.

 

[tny]

This is also indicative of the NYT who has historically been a politically biased publication that has no chance of gaining at least 50 percent of the market who is turned off by their years of unbalanced news reporting. Just look at how well the Wall Street Journal is doing! Staying right down the center of political reporting and has a robust and growing web/mobile strategy.!

If you think the Wall Street Journal is centrist, your living in some alternate universe where Glen Beck is a moderate and Barack Obama is a communist.

 

[cmaier]

Yep, because as demand for content is dictating to the market, print is dead, people want delivered content on demand. WiFi will not deliver on demand.
Therefore to meet the instant demand and demand on mobile infrastructure, 3G is one mobile solution. If consumers want this content wherever they are then they'll want 3G.

Wifi is a boatload more "on demand" than the distribution method with which most people are familiar - the paperboy.

Most iPad sales will be wifi-only, and most people who buy the 3G models will not consider 3G an inherent cost of ebook/periodical distribution - they will be using it primarily for safari, email, etc. If they do see value in "i want my newspaper now, even when I am nowhere near a wifi network" they will realize this is a premium requirement and understand they need to pay for it.

Look, people who buy the NYTimes now pay $40+ a month or something for delivery once a day, whenever the paperboy gets around to it, of day old news.

That's the competition. So compare that to a $10 a month subscription that constantly updates (at least when near a wifi network, and possibly anywhere if you happen to buy 3G, which gives you a lot of additional benefits beyond this).

It doesn't look like a bad deal. When one factors in DRM, however, the price advantage may not look so good. And this assumes that the end product is a superior (or as good) value as the website. We don't know the website's pricing model yet, and we don't know if the ereader version will add features not available on the web for free (archives? crosswords?)

 

[RazHyena]

LOL! Oh wow....

$499 was too good to be true, anyway.

 

[Jason Lee]

Thanks for the reply Jason.

So, let's calculate the total cost for a year's subscription for the current PAPER edition:

• It's $5.85 a week for the first 12 weeks (50% introductory period)
  = $70.20
  
• For the remaining 40 weeks it's $11.70
  = $468.00
  
• TOTAL = $538.20
• PER MONTH = $44.85

So $44.85 for the paper edition. Considering lower costs of distribution and printing, let's knock off 50% and we end up with $22.42. That makes $10 pretty damn cheap and $30 too expensive.

Of course this assumes that you're a current NYT subscriber or someone who buys the paper on a regular basis. By charging $10 I think they can appeal to a new audience: those who don't like to go out and buy papers and those who find large broadsheets difficult to read (especially small text and large paper size). It'd also be cool if you could download the entire paper or set of papers to the iPad to view in an "offline mode" when you're out and about.

In reality they should charge $9.99 (as it sounds so much less than $10) for the weekday editions and probably $12.99 to include the weekend. Both prices seem pretty reasonable to me.

Well, that's just my take. I'd like to know what others think and whether my calculations are sound. Cheers.

I was framing this the same way as you. Ten bucks a monthly seems fair. And it's pretty unrealistic to think newspapers could continue delivering content for free.

I think this issue was addressed rather well in the fifth season of THE WIRE.

 

[NeuralControl]

LOL! Oh wow....

$499 was too good to be true, anyway.

You have that right. The cost of eBooks, textbooks. and possibly newspapers will be quite a nice addition to the "media consumption" device.

 

[redkamel]

BAHAHHAHA

30 dollars a month? For what? Most news is free online and what do I care what some dodo's op-ed says? 30 dollars a month is more than my internet bill, its about 1/3 of my cell, and almost as much as a FULL data plan. All for the "honor" of reading some dying paper, where the reporters ignore REAL stories AND I get ads too? Count me out. I'd pay 1-2 dollars a month, tops.

I'd rather read a blog by someone has an actual drive to make a good point, knows what they are talking about, and doesn't subject me to ads.

Dear NYT: Give my regards to the RIAA!

 

[flybynite]

LOL! Oh wow....

$499 was too good to be true, anyway.

They'll sell twice as many if they make it $399.... but thats another topic...

Look, if the iPad helps digital delivery finally catch up to the elegance of paper, some people will be SAVING money by switching their paper subscriptions to a lower-cost digital subscription. And I'm talking about people who currently don't use the web for their dailies/weeklies/monthlies, like my Mom. Thats a huge swath of the population.

 

[Jason Lee]

30 bucks! That is so typical of modern print media! The grey lady is the perfect example of an industry in deep, deep, deep denial. The web media has not only passed them by, but is laughing at them as they desperately try to cling to what once was.

This is also indicative of the NYT who has historically been a politically biased publication that has no chance of gaining at least 50 percent of the market who is turned off by their years of unbalanced news reporting. Just look at how well the Wall Street Journal is doing! Staying right down the center of political reporting and has a robust and growing web/mobile strategy.

I love that the web people are trying to keep the lady afloat while the old print stooges are ripping new holes in the side of the ship!

The Wall Street Journal is mostly a conservative paper.

 

[ranReloaded]

I think that the Minneapolis Star & Tribune at $15 a year is a great deal, but the NYT needs to rethink their ego. Sorry NY, you are not the center of the world.

No, Cupertino is!

 

[firteen888]

I can't believe most of the posts that I am reading here. First of all, news will not be free forever. While you can certainly cruise over to a number of free websites to get your news today, that won't be possible in the future.

You're out of your mind man. News on the internet will ALWAYS be free. Sure there will be sites that attempt to charge, but the internet is a huge place, you will always be able to find your news for free somewhere on it.

 

[captain kaos]

Its simple, the media can charge for news and people will not pay. They will go to a web page that doesn't to find the information they need. All the industry sees in the ipad is another way to suck out $30 per month out of peoples wages (money that people can't afford.) Imagine if you where paying that (or even the lower rate) PER magazine/newspaper you read per month, plus the data charge per month to get on the web!

Jokers.

 

[ShiftyPig]

that is because people don't want to read that stuff on a notebook or pc.

That is why a device will be so game changing, because it provides a format and a dimension that is compatible with how a lot of people want to casually read things. A laptop and desktop are not conducive to that, and thus not a good choice, even if it was free.

I will pay a decent price for a subscription to my local newspaper, and won't pay a cent to view it on website. They are not even remotely the same thing.

But this is where it all goes tits up - how are you the chosen one who knows what people want? When looking at a product, you can't just dream up what it is, you have to ask what it does.

Again, Segway - cool as hell, but what does it do? It's a scooter. FFS, I can buy a scooter for a couple hundred bucks that I can drive on real streets. A Segway, I can't really drive it in a street or take it on a sidewalk. I can buy a netbook for a couple hundred bucks, and use it to surf the net on my couch, take out on vacation, type up reports while watching TV - all with my head up. An iPad, I can pay twice as much to do about the same, but with noticeable limitations - and, if I want to type, I'm staring down at my lap or holding it cockeyed on my lap like the guy in the Apple-produced promo video.

You really think people are going to fork over $500-$850 for a pad that will lay around the living room for them to read when they don't feel like sitting at a computer? Good luck mate... good luck. You compete with things that do what your product does, not things that necessarily look like your product. The argument that people don't read on a laptop but will on an iPad is absolute consumed-the-Kool-Aid talk.

 

[coleridge78]

You're out of your mind man. News on the internet will ALWAYS be free. Sure there will be sites that attempt to charge, but the internet is a huge place, you will always be able to find your news for free somewhere on it.

When nobody can get paid to produce news anymore, who do you think is going to do it? Crazies with an axe to grind, that's who.

Have fun in your dystopia where your "free news" consists of your neighbor raving about the CIA on a blog, and mouthpieces on each political front funded by benefactors who like throwing money away.