James Murdoch says News Corporation has no immediate plans to bundle the Times Online with Sky television services

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation said yesterday that it had persuaded 50,000 people to subscribe to digital editions of the Times and Sunday Times since the newspapers became the first general-interest titles to introduce online charging in July.

Billed as the biggest – and riskiest – move in digital publishing since the first newspapers went online a decade and a half ago, News Corp said it was content with progress. Analysts estimated that the initial annual revenues generated from digital would be about £5m.

James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's son and the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, Europe and Asia, said he was "really encouraged" and "pretty happy" with the level of interest in "new territory for us".

The Times charges £2 a week – the "paywall" – for access to its digital content, after customers pay an inital £1 for a 30-day trial. Customers can also pay £9.99 a month to sign up to a dedicated edition for the Apple iPad, although only about 10,000 chose to pay for this version only.

Murdoch said 100,000 people who subscribe to the print editions of the Times and its Sunday sister title had activated a digital subscription, a 70% conversion rate. "There are half a million buyers of the Times – so to sign up this many in a few months is a major achievement," he added.

Those who activate a digital subscription pay no extra, meaning the only new income is from online subscribers. Initial estimates suggested the Times and Sunday Times would gross about £5.5m a year – roughly the sum generated by 12,000 print customers buying every day.

Greg Hadfield, a former head of digital development with Telegraph Media Group, publisher of the Daily Telegraph, said that News Corporation need not worry about short term revenues. "For the first time the Times knows who its readers are – if those digital customers stick with the Times for 30 years, imagine how valuable they are over the lifetime of their relationship with the newspaper."

Murdoch said there were plans to target readers overseas with dedicated digital editions, and to examine further "bundling options" in which a digital version of the newspaper would be bundled with other information services to encourage readers who work in particular industries to sign up, such as banking and finance.

However, he said that News Corporation had no immediate plans to bundle the Times Online with Sky television services.

News Corporation is expected this week to formally seek approval from the European Commission to buy the 61% of Sky's parent company, BSkyB, that it does not already own, an £8bn takeover that has run into opposition from a string of rival newspaper groups, including the publishers of the Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and the Guardian.

A key concern is that the enlarged News Corporation, which would be easily the largest media company in the UK, would be able to tie the Times digital editions with Sky subscriptions in a way competing newspaper groups could not match.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/no ... bers-times

Er, yeah, that seems a little too good to be true

Apparently the Guardian get ad revenue of £60 million a year from their website. I would have imagined that the Times could have got a sum similar for the Times and Sunday Times. So a big drop in income.