Times, the online version will be on payment

Timesonlineonpayment Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corporation, did not wasted time and after the digital version of the Wall Street Journal now is ready for the Times: the famous British newspaper, in 2010, will be available online only on payment. James Harding, editor of the historic newspaper, has confirmed that from next spring it will be set a digital tariff for the subscription or for the daily reading.

So if now the Times Online has a selection from the paper version, using, therefore, the same policy of Italian online newspapers, in the future free content will be increasingly reduced while the pay content will be updated in real time. It's not sure, however, that the Times may have the same positive results of the Wall Street Journal, because the two giants are quite different in earnings on paper. The WSJ has approximately 2 million readers while the Times has only 690.000.
The Times, however, has already announced that the price for the web version will be the same of the paper one, 90 pence (about one euro) that will make the site accessible for 24 hours. But why did they take this decision? Because advertising is not convenient anymore. "We believed that advertising would have supported us. But people do shopping looking at the window shop, without getting in our stores," said James Harding, announcing the news to the press. The editor of the Times also said that only 500 thousands visitors among the usual 20 millions website visitors have developed a real attachment to digital newspaper. At this point, therefore, they need to batten down the hatches.

However, there's still a question: now that the Times web version will be only on payment, what will happen to its direct competitors such as the Guardian and The Independent? Will they decide to follow the same example or continue in the free version? At stake there is much, because in Spain a few years ago when El Pais went on payment, readers flocked en masse to the competitor El Mundo.
In all this, the only one who will benefit is the BBC, the public network, which could not put on payment its contents as it is funded by the government.
Meanwhile in Italy comes the annual report on media consumption of Censis, which highlights that in our country between 2007 and 2009 there has been an expansion of free resources at the expense of those on payment. The turnaround is as true for those who read a newspaper once a week and for regular readers. And with these data it seems unlikely, at least in Italy, online information on payment will be able to succeed.