By: Joe Strupp 'Times' Focuses On Selling Subscriptions Via Web
New York newspaper readers, who buy more single copies than readers in any other market, are now being urged to get the paper at home. In recent months, the New York Post and Melville-based Newsday both have stepped up marketing efforts to increase home-delivery subscriptions, while The New York Times is focusing more of its subscription efforts on the Web.
The Post, known primarily as a newsstand buy, has had more than a tenfold increase in home-delivery circulation (from 4,500 to about 48,000) since being reacquired in 1993 by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., and hopes to add another 10,000 subscribers by the end of next year through increased telemarketing, Internet, and direct-mail efforts that have gone beyond the city's five boroughs, Publisher Ken Chandler told E&P.
"We can see that there's demand for it," Chandler said of home delivery, which accounts for about 10% of the Post's 487,219 weekday circulation.
At Newsday, circulation officials have signed up some 5,000 new subscribers since April with a direct-mail program promising would-be subscribers that the paper will be delivered to the location of their choice -- be it the driveway, front porch, or sidewalk -- if they sign up.
The New York Times is cutting back its telemarketing promotions in favor of more Web-based efforts, a spokeswoman said. Since The New York Times on the Web launched in 1996, the 1,159,954-circulation paper has signed up several hundred thousand new subscribers through the Net, including 55,000 last year alone.
Joe Strupp (jstrupp@editorandpublisher.com) is an associate editor for E&P.
Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.
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