Will The Times Kill TimesSelect?

Friedman hating on TimesSelect at the 2006 Webby Awards

That’s what Slate‘s Mickey Kaus claims: the New York Times is about to cancel TimesSelect. At this time, less than 225,000 users are paying the service’s $49.95 annual fee. In November 2005, TimesSelect only had 135,000 customers — and the slow rise in subscriptions is only for starters. Silicon Alley Insider dissected the rumor and examined the many reasons why the Times might want to kill the controversial service. They noted that the Times and WSJ are the only major newspapers that use subscription walls; moreso, the loss of revenue from TimesSelect (+/- $11 million annually) can easily be recouped by the page views by freeing David Brooks, Maureen Dowd and vocal TimesSelect critic Thomas Friedman. After all, even Instapundit doesn’t read TimesSelect anymore.

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