A large percentage of people simply will not pay for website access, no matter how low the price. So you get your money from those who do, who value the service so highly that parting with it would be huge pain point for them, and, so Bloomberg assumes probably after extensive surveys, those who feel that way about their publication, will likely have 35$/month to spare for the privilege.
That said, increasing prices is hard; reducing is easy. If you're trying to figure out sweet spot for max revenue is it probably makes sense to start high and slowly reduce it until you find it. If you're on a rolling monthly payment and decrease everyones prices together, nobody will get upset.
Look at the App Store as an example and how hard it is to get people to pay $1.
Besides the people who are willing to pay are by definition people who are willing to spend money - the same demographic that advertisers covet the most. Meaning they can't target their best customers for advertising.
I'm not doubting that's tough; but it's significantly easier to get someone to pay $1/month than $35/month. People aren't completely stupid; they won't just blindly pay any amount just because they'd decided they'd pay something.
Like I said though; if I was making this decision, I'd start high.
I highly doubt it. Also, while it is possible that the people at bloomberg are so incompetent that they did not consider how to maximize their profits, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they did.
I never said it was likely, just possible. And I wouldn't question the incompetence of anyone these days; big companies make questionable decisions all the time ;-)