

The Times website to start charging £1/day from June - AndrewDucker
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8588432.stm

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aw3c2
Andrew, please not edit headlines unless necessary. This one should be "Times
and Sunday Times websites to charge from June". Yours is inaccurate as
benologist already mentioned. See <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

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timthorn
Especially since The Times already costs £1/day.

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benologist
Headline's kind of sensationalist .... it's 1 pound per day _or_ 2 pounds per
week which is much more reasonable. It seems kind of high although the real
question is if people are willing to pay anything, the right price can be
established after they find that out.

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axod
>£0 is unreasonable. I doubt they'll get many subscribers at all.

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inovica
I will subscribe. Especially if I can have it on an iPad when its out.

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axod
I'd hate to base my business on people who will buy iPads.

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jdietrich
Economics 101 - people will simply substitute a cheaper equivalent good. For
the vast majority of their readers, The Times isn't doing anything unique. I'm
sure they will have a small number of readers who are just loyal to the paper,
some who are fans of a particular columnist, but for most people it just isn't
£104 a year better than the Telegraph or the Independent.

I think Murdoch is mistaken to believe that newspaper buyers are paying for
content - I believe that they are paying for access. If I'm waiting for a
train, I am happy to pay £1 to have something to read. The problem for the
newspapers is that now I carry a smartphone with a huge backlog of RSS feeds -
content far more specific and relevant to me than any daily paper.

Personally, I think the only chance they have is to establish a news cartel,
which I believe is explanation enough for Murdoch's mission to kill off the
BBC.

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harrybr
Other ailing newspaper sites must be happy about this. All they need to do is
_nothing_ (stay free) and they'll get a massive influx of visitors who are
gravitating to the next best free sources. If they're small and lean, that
might be all they need to sustain them.

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babyboy808
There pricing is using some nice psychology and "forcing" people to subscribe
for the £2 per week, People see the £1 per day and say oh wait, I can get a
whole week for just another quid.

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ramchip
_NI chief executive Rebekah Brooks said it was "a crucial step towards making
the business of news an economically exciting proposition"._

And I suppose Windows 7 is "a crucial step towards making the business of
desktop computers an economically exciting proposition". Marketing blurb never
fails to impress me with its sheer lack of logic...

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duarte
This is ridiculous. I get the International Herald Tribune _delivered_ to my
door in London for £0.53 a day. Same goes for the guardian, with subscriptions
under a pound a day. Yes, people will pay for convenience, but this is not a
competitive offer at all!

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aw3c2
The headline is misleading. You can get a week subscription for £2.

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ElliotH
This is incredibly misjudged. The Times, while an excellent news paper
wouldn't be anybody's primary choice as a news source. I suspect that the vast
majority of people who are willing to pay for read it would only pay to read
it on paper.

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tgandrews
It's not like news is hard to come by on the internet. With the cost of
switching to another site at effectively 0 there is no barrier to leaving.

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lovskogen
Start charging £1 without any changes to the quality of the site?

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duarte
they are launching two new websites (separate for the times, and the sunday
times) in may

