Paid Newsday Site? What's 4 1/2 Minutes Worth to You?

(Brief update on parsing what Cablevision meant, here)

Numbers can be terrible reality checks.

Want to know how likely it is that Cablevision's new charge-for-Newsday-online will work? A few rational arguments to follow, but consider this number: The average unique visitor on Newsday.com spends four minutes, 25 seconds per month on the site. Ouch. That number can sub for lots of focus groups, price elasticity testing and the like. Newsday's would-be digital audience has voted with its fingertips. That number is up almost one minute from a year earlier, here courtesy of E and P's monthly Nielsen rankings, but still ranks Newsday as having the lowest online engagement of the top 30 newspaper sites.

Confronted with having to pay for a site you may use less than five minutes a month, you think you are going to pay for it? Wrong site. Wrong year. Wrong metro area.

It will be fun to watch though, since we all needed another case to chew on. Our best case has been Little Rock. Yes, the Democrat-Gazette has done better than average in circ retention, but it is still laying off dozens of people this week. It has applied a tourniquet and that only helps for awhile when you have an internal hemorrhage. They've been able to keep circ better because it is Little Rock, with far less competitive media, and it is the big dog in the state.

Long Island is no Little Rock. In New York, Newsday faces strong competition from the three other dailies plus dozens of local websites. Much of its coverage, in print and online, can be readily found for free elsewhere on the web. So assuming, it gives free, or next-to-free access to its print subscribers, it is unlikely to pick up much new revenue from non-subscribers who can go elsewhere. Similarly, I don't think it's a strong retention device for holding to print readers, though it may work there to some degree for the short-term.

To be more successful, Newsday would need to shift its model to being more hyper-local about Long Island, rather than bringing the world to Long Island, and it doesn't show much signs of doing that.

Cablevision swung for the fences with the $650 million (now written-down) purchase. It tried to parlay the industry triple play (cable, Internet, telephone) into a Home Run. This new move seems to be another attempt to swing for the fences, after apparently whiffing on the dreams of internal synergy that have upended so many media companies. Right now, it looks like you'd have to score the Cablevision auction "victory" over Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman as a strike out at the end of the ninth inning, but we'll get ready for the second game of the doubleheader.

Comments

[No sports]

I really don't agree that this is a "bad" strategy...just one that has no real business effect either way. If Newsday and Cable have a subscriber base that hits more than 75 of the market - who is getting locked out? People outside the market. Advertisers buy the news from these guys for the LOCAL audience they deliver...not a web viewer in Ohio. Remember - we are not talking about USA Today or the NY Times. Seems to me that this is not designed to get people to pay the web fee but just offer subscibers (Both newspaper and tv) a premium benefit.

PS - If you read their statement you'll see that the Hyper Local thing is a big part of what they plan/are delivering with content being able to be viewed according to zip code - now that's LOCAL!

[Arthur]

Ken I have a question. Just about everything you write throws dung at every single move a newspaper makes to try to save itself or improve its finance.

IYHO, where WOULD this be the right move? For which newspaper or which market WOULD this be the right move?

I'd really be fascinated to see if you have an answer.

[Spencer Soper]

Ken,
Does Newsday expect to turn every web reader into a web subscriber? I doubt it. But that seems to be the case you make about the 4 1/2 minutes per visitor. What I'd like to know: Is there a small core of readers who spend far more time than 4 1/2 minutes, and are possibly willing to pay, who would be more a more valuable audience than casual drive-thru readers? Just a thought from a reporter who likes to think what he produces has some value. At least some of what he produces.

[Chris Krewson]

Just to be ornery ...

Cablevision said it would 'no longer give it away' - which we're taking to mean 'charge for content.'

But what pctg of folks on LI subscribe and get Internet access thru Cablevision? Since they're already paying for cable, will they access Newsday.com free? Do they get discounts on subscriptions to the printed paper? Is this a new addition to traditional bundles, one that gives them a much more local presence then, say, Verizon?

If they make a few more $ on one-off folks looking to read the site, fine. But why have cable companies ever had local content on their systems?

To sell cable signups.

[Tim Windsor]

Ken,

I wrote up two case studies at Nieman Journalism Lab from the last time Paid Content Fever swept the land.

When they went behind the wall, both the LA Times and the Albuquerque Journal were lauded as trailblazers.

In short, both experiments failed, though only one (LA) ended. The other continues to limp along.

Details here: http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/02/will-paid-content-work-two-cautionary-tales-from-2004/