News Limited to move to a metered paywall from next month
News Limited is set to abandon its existing paywall model and move to a metered model in less than a month, Mumbrella can reveal.
Sources have told Mumbrella that metro tabloids The Daily Telegraph and The Herald Sun will move to the new model, a two-stage metered paywall, from the middle of May.
News Limited’s new paywall model will monitor usage based on cookies dropped onto users’s browsers. After looking at a certain number of articles, readers will be asked to register, in order to be given a further number of free stories. Once readers reach a second quota of stories, they will be asked to pay.
The publisher’s new digital subscriber strategy, being called News Plus, is a departure from the current “freemium” paywall, which combines some free content with other content requiring a paid subscription, and which was first introduced by The Australian in October 2011. Melbourne tabloid The Herald Sun also introduced a “freemium” paywall in March 2012.
If it means fewer readers of their noxious slanted rubbish, all good.
well to avoid paying I presume all one has to do is delete the heraldsun cookies then? not so hard. lets see if word gets around.
So if I turn on “private browsing”, I won’t have to pay?
It really is very interesting to mecthat News does this stuff, taking huge uturns and backflips on stated intent and somehow gets nil flak. And its cockips have been spectacular. Yet ghere is never any surprise or comment. Certainly not on thus site
Why have a paywall at all if it is so easy to circumvent? I have been reading countless stories on The New York Times and The Australian by spending one second to get around paying. You wouldn’t call these sophisticated models.
Nice spelling Ex reader
The cover price of News Ltd’s printed titles do not pay for their production costs – haven’t done for a while now. It’s only by subsidising them through ad sales that they make any profit. Moving towards a digital platform where there are no printing costs should be music to their ears. Charging for content will drive away eyeballs and reduce the value of their advertising proposition, driving down CPM rates. It’s their own fault – they’re going into this with their eyes open.
@ Doug; I agree with you sir.
How about somebody starts up a media company in Oz, based on quality journalism. Run it nice and lean, without any big wigs, or shareholders.
It is there for the taking guys!
Or of course, allow international publishers to set up shop – The Guardian as an example…
@Patrick – DATA
Murdoch has just been in Oz again and this will be the latest idea to flit through his head, so his henchmen will click their heels together and do as they are told.
Can’t wait for the Guardian to show Australia what real journalism is like. Can’t read Fairfax any more, not after they fired every female editor and then tried to buy us off with Daily Life.
Murdoch thinks cookies are troublesome morsels that get under his dentures.
@Ex reader
No surprise at all – and no comments either – why would anyone ?
given that particular organisation’s previous corporate behaviour,
you’d be a fool to be surprised!
And yes noice spellung …
1. Refuse to pay for news media.
2. Complain about quality.
Doug, 1,000,000’s disagree with you…
The most interesting point is actually in the last par of this story. The Hun and Tele haven’t released numbers of digital subscribers because they are clearly low. News saw it fit to release them for The Oz and not its tabloid titles despite the fact both Hun and Tele would easily have more readers and therefore probably more digital readers. Its interesting to see if a metered model improves subscription numbers.
Why would one pay for something readily available elsewhere. Opportunity cost…?
Pay? You’ve got to be joking? Seriously? Cookies? Intelligent people like me will always be two to three steps ahead of this crap, as if the dinosaurs of publishing have got a hope in the new world of information technology, of controlling who sees what and when, good luck
Thanks Anon
Simon, cookie monster etc, paywalls like this are meant to be leaky. They don’t care if you circumvent, because you weren’t going to pay anyway. But most people, when given the chance to consider the value proposition, make a decision on whether or not it’s worth it, not “how do I get around this”. Whether or not it’ll be a successful model, we’ll see, but either way you are factored into it, don’t worry.
@Simon I’m looking forward to that news report written by ‘information technology’
Time to set Grandma’s browser to auto-delete cookies on closing, although I’d prefer she just didn’t read the crap.
Herald Sun digital subscriptions are a mere fraction of what they budgeted for. News Ltd doesn’t get digital, they try to do it in-house with sub-par technology, appallingly slow servers and substandard content. They think that their content is world class which is unfortunately so far from the truth. News is a commoditised market and your choice is either to be cheap/free or to pivot and add REAL value. The later requires investment and vision, which they clearly don’t have. Good luck with the metered paywall, but if it is relying on cookies it will be easily bypassed by using incognito mode. Hopefully they are not that technically illiterate, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Hi, I’m interested as to why my comment went unpublished when others were given the OK after it? My email address is available to you if you care to reply,
Cheers
Mike
Hi Mike,
I’m afraid I can’t spot your previous comment – sometimes our spam filter can be overzealous. By all means please resubmit it (and cc tim@focalattractions.com.au if you like).
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
I will not pay for TV…and will not pay for news also…plenty of other places to get news….not that fussed anyway.
FWIW … almost nothing, of course, as this story is now three screens back. But thanks for the reply.
***********
Patrick
If you have been reading “countless” articles on the NY Times and the Australian, you obviously find them of value.
So why not pay? A digital pass to the Oz costs $3 a week.
The price of a cup of coffee.
Both those publications are losing money. If they deteriorate and then disappear, you may ask yourself that question. It’ll be too late, of course