Times Has Given Up on Select

Anticipated for awhile, the NY Times Co. has decided to discontinue its TimeSelect subscription service:

In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free.

The Times said the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.

“But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site, NYTimes.com.

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

So the Times will continue to focus on SEO and try and grab ad revenue from that exposure.

Almost nobody has been able to maintain and sustain a subscription model online, not the Times and probably not the WSJ, which is paid for by corporations. The Times cites the greater opportunity in online advertising and the Journal is still toying with the idea of going free. Only Zagat and Consumer Reports remain, both of which have felt intensifying pressure to “open up.”

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Here’s more on the decision from MediaPost.