Well, we mourn the end of Times Select. Well, actually, no. I want my MTV. Wait, I want my free New York Times.
The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight Tuesday night, reflecting a growing view in the industry that subscription fees cannot outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site.
The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to its columnists’ work and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times, and to some students and educators.
And the Times, they are a changing. (Please hear my rendition of Bob Dylan with a yodel and cowbell.)
UPDATE: Rex Hammock also approves. Booyah!
And people wonder why The Times continues to bleed money. Google figured out you could make money off ads, what, 10 years ago as of last week? And the NYT is just now getting around to the idea that if they put banner ads on their more popular destinations, rather than making them a walled garden, that they might make a shitload of cash? Even AOL figured that out a year ago!
Heh, both Newscoma and Ron cracked me up.
It’s definitely a happy day.
It’s about time! I missed some of the columnists, and often waited for some of them to be reported at other progressive outlets. Times Select was a bad business decision, and it took too long for them to figure it out.