Gawker
Last week, Keith Kelly claimed that the New York Times will finally end the long national joke that is TimesSelect—you just know Maureen Dowd is cursing those Freakonomics guys right now for being able to refuse to have their blog behind the TimesSelect pay wall!—and a quick look at the just-out July numbers confirms that the core group of 225,000 or so people who signed up to pay for the service in the first place are pretty much the same people who still subscribe. (Everyone else either gets it free as part of their home delivery service, or as part of a college/university deal.) Whenever it does get shut down, it'll be a speck of egg on the faces of Times CEO Janet Robinson and Publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. But the failure of TimesSelect is probably the least of their worries right now: Their ad revenue, especially in the Regional Media Group (all those little papers they own in places like Lakeland, Florida) and classifieds across the board, is having a bit of a summer slump.
Ad revenue for the New York Times Media Group decreased 2.9 percent from July 2006—which is actually not bad. Take the New England Media Group, where apparently the Nordstrom and Neiman-Marcus in the Natick Mall have yet to open and save the world: Ad revenues are down 4.9 percent compared to last July. The bad news came from the Regional Media Group, whose ad revenues are down a cringe-worthy 10.9 percent, "mainly because of softness in home furnishing, home improvement and department store advertising. Classified advertising revenues decreased due to weakness in real estate, help-wanted and automotive advertising." Hi, Craigslist!
All of those numbers are marginally better than the June results, when the Times was down 3 percent, the New England Media Group was down 11.8 percent, and the Regional Media Group was down 12.2 percent.
The bright spot, as always, is Internet revenue, which grew 19.3 percent over last July. But while impressive, the rate of Internet growth is also slowing. In the second quarter, Internet revenue grew 23.4 percent; in June, Internet revenues were up 22 percent over last year.
We assume that a lot of that growth came from the About Group, whose ad revenues rose 34.7 percent in July (About's ad revenues are bundled into the calculations for the Internet group, but also broken out separately, presumably because they're a spot of good news). It seems that as the months go by, the company is looking for other, mostly online-based, ways to make money to support its sinking newspaper business. Bill Keller doesn't work for free, ya know! But now his salary is being paid by stuff like "What Not to Play At Your Wedding."
New York Times Company: Press Releases [NYT Co.]
Comments
I don't know which is more irritating -- that "Freakonomics" guy or that "Word Is Flat" guy. I want both of them to just go away.
Actually, there are two Freakonomics guys, aren't there? No wonder I can't escape them.
@MisterHippity:
The "World is Flat" guy (aka Thomas "the 'stache" Friedman). Always the "World is Flat" guy. Never not the "World is Flat" guy.
@ misterhpppity
dude ... the freakonomics guy is a latterday reinvention of utility theory economics with a blend of behaviorism ... harmless, really
the flat earth guy -- known on the poltix blogs as "the mustache of understanding" is a menace and a plague
Doree, as long as the Glamor Shots and the Pac Sun in the Natick Mall are going strong, I don't think we have to worry. About anything. Ever. They're the world's success barometers.
Funny thing is that Keith Kelly will probably end up killing Times Select just by writing that it's going to end soon.
It didn't even have to be true, but it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Because Times readers hear that TS will end, there's no incentive to sign up & pay for it.
So any growth of TS is dead!
And the Times will have to dump it because it will soon lose them money.
So, congrats Keith, Rupert should give you a bonus for that column, you've cost Pinch both money & credibility!
@IBentMyWookie: I'm with you. That's a matter of tool versus cool in my book. But I like freakonomics. If for nothing else than the study on lowered crime rates and access to safe and free abortion. That takes some balls. Talk about freaking the bejesus out of people.
Friedman = "I'm gonna take somethin' real hard and break it down so folks can finally get it, goshdarnit!"
I can just see his next book: The World Today: These Are Changing Times
A propos of nothing, is Balk back on jury duty?
Wow, this smacks of serious business reporting. You go Jon Friedman!
I was kind of hoping that the Times would continues TimeSelect, but only use it so that us non-paying customers would be prevented from reading the endless stories about Karl Rove that the site has been running this week.
(Everyone else either gets it free as part of their home delivery service, or as part of a college/university deal.)
... or, the employees get calls from family and friends for a password when they want to read an article behind the wall.
or so i've, um, heard.
@Ha Ha Sound: *I* was kind of hoping they'd keep the paywall up just so I could finally forget who Maureen Dowd was.
I suckered up the $49 for Times Select. Gawker got me for 3 t-shirts - a much superior value proposition.
Biggest newspaper in the country -- going broke.
Largest mortgage lender -- ditto.
Stock market -- circling the drain.
Elvis -- still dead.
@Transuranic: I like Maureen Dowd. Of course, I haven't read anything by her in about two years because I'm too cheap to pay the $49 for TS, but I used to read her.
I tried to offer extra money if they'd keep Selena Roberts off my terminal but it didn't work. She came on the line herself and started screaming about entitled white boys at Duke and... oops, that's over, isn't it?
If a MILF is a Mother I'd Like to Fuck, what's the proper acronym for Maureen Dowd, a Childless Woman I'd Like to Fucking Kill? Is it CWILFK?
Mo' MoDo, Mo' Money.
Does Friedman still think we can win Iraq in the next six months?
can't wait to read maureen's column on how times select died because she couldn't get a man.
ModestProposal:
My MoDo acronym:
WWIBFFAHPDSOMSCLTC
Woman Who Idiotically Blames Feminism For All Her Problems Despite Some Obviously More Significant Candidates, Like The Culture.
Or, as Feministing put it much more succinctly a few years ago:
"Last I heard, Feminism wasn't a fucking dating service."
Still, if they did away with TimesSelect, I'd probably submit to reading her again.
@yellojkt: He'll give us his solemn assessment, in six months.
Mais Gawker, you never delivered the money shot: quando quando quando? When will I be able to welcome Paul Krugman back into my cache?
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