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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
Sporting News Daily Becomes Pay ServiceThursday, April 1, 2010 The daily digital sports newspaper Sporting News Today will become a fee-based product, The Sporting News announced recently. In partnership with  digital magazine tech provider Zinio, the daily digital version of the TSN brand will be priced at $2.99 a month but will give subscribers access to the same product on all the devices Zinio’s Unity platform services: PC, Mac, Netbook, touch-screen and tablet devices. The fee-based product will follow a hybrid model that includes ads. The launch sponsor for the project is Coors Light, which will include a high impact interactive ad in the initial issues. The Sporting News Today product is a daily formatted issue of Sporting News’ breaking news content: scorecards, stats, image galleries and embedded video highlights. The new Zinio partnership enables more embedded multimedia and a consistent interface and look and feel across platforms that will include the upcoming iPad. Sporting News Today goes into the new model with more than 200,000 subscribers to the free version. Sporting News president and publisher Jeff Price tells minonline that he knows the pay model will impact the subscription base, but statistics also show that the audience for this product is very dedicated. According to a digital reader survey from the previous version of the daily, 90% of subscribers read the pub either as soon as they received it or the same day, and 95% say they are “very satisfied” with it. Sporting News Today is delivered via email link each morning by 6 a.m. Readers spend an average of 20 minutes with it each day and read 20 pages. Of the readers, 42% have emailed an article to someone else. Price says, “Understanding we'd lose audience in the transition to a paid model, we've developed a long-term strategy that gives magazine advertisers compelling added value in Sporting News Today in 2010. Advertisers such as Coors Light want to be learning in this space now, and the Sporting News Magazine/Sporting News Today combo is the perfect way to make that happen.” For the time being, advertising in Sporting News Today is being offered on a value-added basis, but as it demonstrates retention and builds an audience under the fee-based model, the ad offer will evolve as well. “When we hit 250,000 paid subscribers, Sporting News Today will again become a free-standing ad vehicle,” says Price. Sporting News also recently announced its partnership with sports video provider CineSport, which will help pump up the video content available at the SportingNews.com site and in the digital daily. Users will get a 60-day free trial of the redesigned daily. The product has been free since its launch in July 2008. If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com
Take min's fun quiz and find out how magazine-savvy you are! COMMENTS
1.
Can't this publication remain free? Can't the ad s purchased cover the cost of the digital distribution? Sad that they will be making $600,000 a month on subscriptions alone. They are greedy and want both subscriptions and ad dollars. Too bad too. Good material but not worth the subscription.
Posted by JT on Wednesday, July 7, 2010 @ 01:35 PM
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