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Comment by mapgrep | Hacker News Reader

Even people inside the NYT know the pricing for digital subscriptions is excessive. They're high because circ department won an internal war and inflated digital prices in a misguided attempt to protect print subs. The NYT has experimented but is still clinging to the past.

Which is why the "All Digital Access" subscription costs more than Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Now combined. Give me a break.

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This raised an interesting question for me - how much money is saved on a per-subscriber basis by sending the digital version vs. print (for the NYT)? Their pricing certainly doesn't reflect it:

  Web + Smartphone:    $3.75/wk  $16.25/mo  $195/yr
  Web + Tablet:        $5.00/wk  $21.67/mo  $260/yr
  All Digital Access:  $8.75/wk  $37.92/mo  $455/yr
  7-Day Home Delivery: $8.90/wk  $38.57/mo  $463/yr

There are multiple levels of insanity here:

  Web + Smartphone & Web + Tablet are identical except
    for device type but Tablet is 33% more.
  Web + Smartphone plus Web + Tablet cost as much
    *together* as All Digital Access (and are feature
    equivalent).
  7-Day Home Delivery *includes* All Digital Access and
    costs about the same. Paper is free?

None of these pricing strategies appear to be designed to maximize readership, broaden subscription basis, or grow brand penetration. They are structured to capture the most value possible from customers with high switching costs or price indifference. This is what a conservator in a dying market looks like.

On the smart phone, you don't see the comments for an article but the Tablet version gives you the comments. I can't say if the comments are worth the 33% extra cost but I typically end up reading the web version because I find the comments on the article usually interesting. I ended up going for the Web + Smartphone version because I like reading NYTimes and this was the cheapest I could afford. I've also found quite a few people in this same position.

The reason that print+web packages don't cost significantly more than web-only is because print advertising is still a lucrative business. NYT can a a absolutely justify giving away the paper to subscribers on that basis.

Except, if that were true, why not just make it a free paper? Presumably ad targeting... I understand the limitations of their existing revenue model. It just results in some pretty consumer-unfriendly offerings, at the expense of readership and penetration...

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EDIT: Went back to look at the numbers... They have tons of online eyeballs - those eyeballs just don't make much money. They manage to double their digital revenue with the paywall. Even so, it's dwarfed by the print revenue.

This may shift as advertisers see the value of targeted online user groups... I could totally imagine the NYT of the future being a collection of blogs dealing in Tech, Biz, World News, Local News, etc. Ads on the Biz site would be targeted differently than on the World News site. This might give advertisers what they want in terms of a differentiated audience.

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From the 2014 Annual Report:

  Average Paper Circulation in U.S. (Int'l)
    648,900 (219,500) for weekday (Monday to Friday)
  1,185,400 (220,500) for Sunday

  Paid Digital Subscribers
  910,000 as of December 28, 2014

  Monthly (Annual) Digital Readership
  31MM (372MM) unique desktop/laptop visitors (U.S.)
  42MM (504MM) unique desktop/laptop visitors (WW)
  28MM (336MM) unique mobile device visitors (U.S.)

Off these eyeballs, they made:

  $667.5MM from print subscribers
  $169.3MM from digital subscribers

  $483.5MM from print advertising
  $178.8MM from digital advertising

Actually, thats not true. A broad amount of research wen tin to this (originally at least).

There is a method to this madness :)

Please tell us more!

Almost thought you were joking, but wow... nearly $38/mo to read NYT's webpages.

   The NYT has experimented but is still clinging to the past.

Yes and No. Print advertising is significantly worth more than web. Thats not "in the past' that is alive and well (but declining). Still high.

Ya but then isn't it pretty logical that people use a browser extension to get around buying subscriptions that are priced artificially high to protect a soon-to-be-obsolete revenue stream?

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