NYTIMES.COM TO OPEN UP ‘TIMES SELECT’

Cory Bergman September 17th, 2007

NYTimes.com’s premium section, Times Select, will be available free of charge beginning on Wednesday of this week. Explains the press release:

“Since Times Select was launched in 2005, changes in the way people find news and opinion on the Web have altered the online landscape. Because of online users’ growing reliance on search in order to navigate the Web, NYTimes.com expects to see a substantially increased number of unique users referred to and accessing the site once the pay wall is gone. Due to this anticipated growth in traffic, the TimesSelect subscription revenue model will be replaced by one that is based on advertising.”

As part of the change, archived articles back to 1987 will also be free. American Express has signed on as the first sponsor of the newly opened areas of NYTimes.com.

Of Times Select’s 787,400 active subscribers, 471,200 received the service free of charge as a benefit of their home-delivery subscriptions and another 89,200 received it for free on college campuses. So if you do the math, that leaves 227,200 paying subscribers. Clearly the Times believes it can beat that revenue number through advertising alone. “As demonstrated by the commitment of American Express, advertisers see the enormous value in making our site open and free to everyone,” said Denise Warren, SVP and chief advertising officer. “With the removal of the pay wall, the audience potential at NYTimes.com, already the No. 1 newspaper Web site in the United States, is vast. Advertisers on the site can expect to see an unprecedented number of Times readers interacting with their brands.”

Times Select has been the great experiment in premium newspaper content (the WSJ is a different animal). So does this put a nail in the coffin of the premium online news model? Press release follows…

PRESS RELEASE — NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–NYTimes.com announced today that the content previously available through TimesSelect, including online access to 23 news and opinion columnists, personalization tools, access to the Times archives back to 1987 and more, will be available free of charge at www.nytimes.com beginning Wednesday, Sept. 19.

Since TimesSelect was launched in 2005, changes in the way people find news and opinion on the Web have altered the online landscape. Because of online users’ growing reliance on search in order to navigate the Web, NYTimes.com expects to see a substantially increased number of unique users referred to and accessing the site once the pay wall is gone. Due to this anticipated growth in traffic, the TimesSelect subscription revenue model will be replaced by one that is based on advertising.

American Express has signed on as the first sponsor of the opened areas of NYTimes.com. For the next few weeks, it will have a significant advertising presence on NYTimes.com’s home page as well as in the Opinion and Archives sections that were formerly behind the pay wall.

“We are excited at the prospect of welcoming many new readers to NYTimes.com as a result of this decision,” said Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager, NYTimes.com. “TimesSelect brought new commentary and voices to the site, as well as an influx of subscription revenue. But the increasing dominance of search and other forms of referral have changed the equation. Allowing unfettered, free access to our opinion content and recent archives should enable us to drive readership and advertising.”

“As demonstrated by the commitment of American Express, advertisers see the enormous value in making our site open and free to everyone,” said Denise Warren, senior vice president and chief advertising officer, The New York Times Media Group. “With the removal of the pay wall, the audience potential at NYTimes.com, already the No. 1 newspaper Web site in the United States, is vast. Advertisers on the site can expect to see an unprecedented number of Times readers interacting with their brands.”

TimesSelect was launched in September 2005 and, two years later, had approximately 787,400 active subscribers. Approximately 471,200 received TimesSelect free of charge as a benefit of their home-delivery subscriptions, while 227,000 paid for online access and another 89,200 received it for free on college campuses through TimesSelect University. During its tenure, TimesSelect provided exclusive online access to news and opinion columnists, including all the Op-Ed columnists appearing in the print version of The Times.

In addition, TimesSelect gave readers unlimited access to The Times archives dating back to 1851, placing The Times’s daily chronicles from the past at the touch of a mouse.

This content, including columns, articles, blogs, videos, podcasts and audio recordings, as well as online research and storage tools like News Tracker and Times File and archival access back to 1987, will now be freely available at NYTimes.com. Many of these benefits did not exist on NYTimes.com prior to TimesSelect.

Archival access between 1851 and 1922 will also be freely available. Archives for the years 1923 – 1986 are available to be purchased in single or 10-article packages.

Home delivery subscribers to The Times, who received TimesSelect as part of their print subscriptions, will have the same unrestricted access to the site that other readers will have, but will also have access to the complete Times archives from 1851 to the present.

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include national and local conditions, as well as competition that could influence the levels (rate and volume) of retail, national and classified advertising and circulation generated by the Company’s various markets and material increases in newsprint prices. They also include other risks detailed from time to time in the Company’s publicly filed documents, including the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2006. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.