By: Joe Strupp About 135,000 Web users have signed up, and paid, for The New York Times' new TimesSelect program, which requires online readers to pay a fee to read its opinion columns, while also receiving bonus material, the paper said Wednesday. The numbers reflect those who have agreed to pay the $7.95 monthly fee or $49.95 annual price since the service began less than two months ago.
Home subscribers also have access to the service but do not pay extra for it.
"We're delighted with the enthusiastic response to TimesSelect," Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president, digital operations for The New York Times Company said in a statement. "Clearly we've put together a product that appeals to a wide range of readers. The feedback from users has been very positive, particularly about interaction with columnists, usage of new tools and access to The Times' archives."
Online-only subscribers represent about half of the overall 270,000 number of Web users who have registered for the service. The remaining 135,000 or so are home-delivery subscribers who get the service as part of their regular subscription, but must register online to use it, a Times spokeswoman told E&P.
The paper also noted that more than 90% of those who initially signed up for the program's 14-day free trial have become paying subscribers. In the week before it launched, when TimesSelect was priced at $39.95 per year, more than 20,000 online-only subscribers signed up, the paper said.
"We're committed to making our world-class journalism available across all platforms," said Scott Heekin-Canedy, president of the Times. "TimesSelect is another new and innovative way for readers to interact with The Times."
The service had sparked complaints from some observers, and at least some of the columnists, who lamented the loss of a larger, free-access audience. However, most of the writers also agreed that the newspaper needed to increase revenue from the Web. Among the paper's popular columnists are Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, and Paul Krugman.
Launched on Sept. 19, the service also features access to The Times's archives, previews of articles from the Sunday paper, multimedia packages, and new elements involving the columnists, such as question and answers sessions and video packages.
To date, the Times has been reluctant to place a benchmark on the success of TimesSelect, but Nisenholtz told
E&P columnist Steve Outing in September that he's looking for significant numbers. The goal won't be met with TimesSelect subscription numbers in the tens of thousands, Nisenholtz said; it needs to be in the hundreds of thousands in the early years, and even more over the long term.
The Times press release also stressed that "the vast majority of NYTimes.com remains free to all visitors. According to internal data in September NYTimes.com achieved record traffic of 21.3 million unique visitors worldwide, a 49% increase from September 2004, principally as a result of hurricane coverage as well as site improvements."
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