Hmm, The Times Paywall Isn't Working

I've previously blogged on how I think NewsCorp's paywall has been doing and I think I've been broadly right, but perhaps I drank too much of the NewsCorp coolaid...

The following sums show that NewsCorp has lost revenue. This was their likely position before the paywall:

uniques pages CPM revenue
21000000 25 4 £2.1m

Now, they claim to have 100,000 subscribers paying up to £10 (most I'm sure are paying the £2 intro fee). That's $1m at best. I reckon that it's something above half that figure.. Say $700k at the most. That's a third of the ad revenue. And the ad revenue has probably disappeared, perhaps £200k at best.

I'm not counting the paper subscribers, since the cost of printing and distributing the snail mail versions is enormous.

NewsCorp might be making positive noises, but this is a losing model.

After NewsCorp takes over BSkyB and James Jnr takes over his dad's company, there's little doubt that he'll rapidly ditch the old publishing business. in favour of the much more profitable TV business.