Cablevision/Newsday trying to become irrelevant.

When trying to grow your business, especially one in this digital age with competitors cropping up by the hundreds if not thousands, shooting yourself in the foot with poor business decisions doesn’t seem like a very good way to continue rolling in the dough. For Newsday (which is owned by Cablevision) a paywall isn’t necessarily the best idea as many customers expect a free web portal, the way they are going about it is all wrong. The likely scenario would seem to be as such:

• Customers who already subscribe to Cablevision TV or Newsday print papers can access Newsday online for free.

• New customers who do not subscribe to either Cablevision or Newsday products will pay a $10/month fee

Seems reasonable for a paywall scheme does it not? Well, they got part of it right — current customers of Cablevision or Newsday do in fact get access to Newsday online for free. New to the Newsday online scene are ya? That’ll be $5 — per week. *rolls eyes*

Are they trying to kill themselves? If you block off new subscribers who simply don’t want Cablevision TV service or an actual Newsday print paper showing up at their door step by charging them for online access, they’re just going to go elsewhere. If your business — the newspaper industry — isn’t doing so hot, bringing in new customers to would seem like a pretty high priority. I guess Cablevision didn’t spend that long talking to newspaper industry sources when they originally purchased Newsday and admitted they had no idea on how to run a newspaper business. Mass defect coming soon.

TechDirt

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