November 11, 2005

New York Times Select on Par with Wall Street Journal

The New York Times recently announced its subscriber numbers for TimesSelect, the new section of the New York Times online for which users have to pay a fee to access. It launched on September 19, 2005, and non-print subscribers now must pay a fee to access "premium content," which includes regular columnists and article archives. At the same time, it made registration unnecessary for viewing all other content.

Since its launch, TimesSelect has maintained a market share of visits similar to that of The Wall Street Journal, another newspaper site with a paid subscription model. Visits to TimesSelect surpassed visits to the Wall Street Journal on weekend days, not surprising given the Journal's business focus.

Average session time for TimesSelect was also on par with the Wall Street Journal; for the month of October, TimesSelect's average session time was 4:46, while the average session for WSJ was 5:10. Average session time for the NYT main site was 8:42.

Times Select users tend to be older than standard New York Times users: for the four weeks ending November 5, 2005, 54% of visitors to Times Select were over the age of 55, versus 35% of visitors to NYT. The younger generation is getting their opinions from other sources, like blogs, which will be explored in the upcoming Hitwise News & Media Report. More on that next week.

Posted by LeeAnn Prescott at 02:16 PM
Posted to News and Media

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