That pay wall that Newsday put around its Web site last year? Crazily effective–at keeping people from buying an online subscription.
Last year, when executives from Cablevision (CVC) announced plans to turn their paper’s Web site into a pay-to-play proposition, I dreamed up a way it could work: Maybe Long Island residents who wanted to peruse the paper’s classifieds would pay up. Nope.
Since the wall went up three months ago, only 35 people–as in not quite three dozen–have paid the $5 a week fee for Web access, the New York Observer reports.
The Observer’s John Koblin quotes a Cablevision PR person who says that the “modest” pickup isn’t a surprise, but that’s some very unconvincing spin. Putting up a paywall isn’t cheap or easy: Why bother if it only generates an extra $9,000?
As PaidContent notes, Cablevision can also argue that the real idea behind the pay wall is that it’s supposed to make existing subscribers feel like they’re getting something of real value (advertisers too, supposedly). But it’s hard to argue that online access is a “value-add” if only 35 people value it.
It’s also hard to argue that Cablevision’s problems offer any clue about the prospects of the New York Times’s (NYT) coming pay wall. Because the Times is a different beast than any other paper in the country.
I would be interested, though, in learning how the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune did with :Access Vikings Premium,” a $20-a-year pay wall it put up around most stories about the home team last season.
I could see the thinking behind this one, which showed up around the same time Brett Favre joined the team. And this was the year to try it, since the Vikings had a great season until they blew the NFC Conference game, as is their wont.
But in my personal one-man focus group, the pay wall only served to keep me from visiting StarTribune.com at all. I’m now noticing that the paper seems to have dropped the wall around content it used to ask me to pay for, so perhaps I wasn’t the only one. I’ve asked the paper for more details.
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