Paywalled NYT Now Has 300,000 Online Subscribers 179
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like the derided-on-slashdot paywall for the NY Times hasn't brought down the paper so far. The Times now reports 300,000 digital subscribers (to e-reader versions and the web combined) and digital advertising revenue for the part of the company that includes the paper has increased 6% this quarter."
probably (Score:1)
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Kindle owners?
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I will say, having the International Herald on mine is freakin' handy.
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Why do you want something that, by it's very nature, is substantial out f date by the time you get to it?
Which is fine, I'm just curious.
Re:probably (Score:5, Insightful)
Real news coverage is about depth much more than timeliness. I'd much rather have in-depth analysis of say, a proposed law, in a week or two than fluff in 6 hours.
Re:probably (Score:4, Insightful)
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I find myself much more likely to take a look at international news when it's "physically" available to me. I don't seem to do so when I'm sitting at a computer, even though I could do so more easily, for free, and in a more timely manner.
Not sure why.
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It's interesting to read magazines like The Economist six months or so after they're published. You quickly get a feel for what's worth getting curious, outraged, or excited about, and what's not. Anything that's still important and relevant after six months is worth further consideration.
Obviously that approach doesn't scale all the way down to local news media, unless you want to wake up to the sound of bulldozers in your front yard. But on a national/international level, it saves a lot of time and ang
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I got it for free on my ipad
Re:probably (Score:4, Insightful)
I got it for free on my ipad
No, you didn't. It was paid for by the outrageous markup you turned your head and coughed up for having PHB decide what you can and cannot run on hardware for which you were way overcharged.
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I got it for free on my ipad
No, you didn't. It was paid for by the outrageous markup you turned your head and coughed up for having PHB decide what you can and cannot run on hardware for which you were way overcharged.
Why all the hate?
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You might notice that the truth of that statement does not dispute the argument that the number of subscribers is inflated by those who were not given the choice of declining the subscription in exchange for a price reduction on the iPad.
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Have any relevant information at all that the free NYT app and the price of the ipad have any connection whatsoever?
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I don't see how that changes it either. The question is not whether the price of the iPad would have been less without the subscription. The question is whether the iPad users would have bought the subscription if it had an additional cost, as distinguished from buying an iPad and receiving a subscription they would not otherwise have paid for.
Put it a different way: If every iPad user gets a "paid" subscription but without paying additional money, you aren't measuring the number of paid subscriptions, you'
this just in! (Score:1, Redundant)
This just in: Slashdot is often wrong about things like this. The same way neither the iPhone or iPad failed.
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Slashdot's resident pundits are pretty much wrong about everything technology-related. It's pretty hilarious to compare this place to something like Hacker News.
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Confirmation bias, you have it.
Many people said it would work as well.
Re:this just in! (Score:4, Interesting)
Slashdot overall actually has about every opinion possible. Some of the most loved (ie - highly moderated) opinions turn out to be as wrong as they could possibly be.
Consider this gem [slashdot.org], particularly "If Apple enters that market with a phone, they're fucked". Fucked with finding warehouse space to store pallets of money, as it turns out.
Though there were plenty of opinions contrary to that one the groupthink doesn't often push them to the top.
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Slashdot readers != targetted demographic (Score:1)
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Yet another story that shows that a /. reader/commenter does not represent the typical customer of a major news outlet.
Care to back that up with some facts?
Aside the few clowns on /. it is a highly literate audience - which is what the NYT caters to.
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Highly literate audience with disposable income for things like ipads/nooks/whatever.
And coffee. Don't forget coffee.
and the coffee maker is about 12 feet from my desk.
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I get the distinct impression that the generic Slashdot user doesn't want to pay for anything. They should be able to make most objects out of recycled Linksys routers and old televisions with a pair of pliers and a soldering iron given to them by their father in fifth grade. Clothes are recycled from various dumpsters or Goodwill stores. Coffee comes from... well, you don't want to know that.
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Not at all. It is maybe center or center right. Only compared to Fox news and other so far right they might as well be fascist news outlets is NYT lefty. If you want to see an actual leftist/lefty newspaper check out http://socialistworker.org/ [socialistworker.org].
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Reality has a well known left-bias.
Indeed. That's why communism was such a success.
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Funny how the extremes of Left and Right both end up in exactly the same place: Totalitarianism. Maybe Left and Right aren't very accurate labels.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart [wikipedia.org]
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Really? Next I suppose you'll tell me Fascism is also some form of Leftism plot and the entire right-wing Christian coalition bringing it along were actually disguised liberals there to give the extreme conservatives a bad name. Let's be morally serious here and objectively assess the evidence. I would hope Coulter/McCarthy-like liberal paranoia could be reserved for a less educated audience where it can prey on ignorance and illusory superiority to gain popularity.
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Keep in mind that every print subscriber gets a free top-of-the-line digital subscription. Its actually cheaper to get the paper edition and recycle it then it is to just get the online, in fact, which is annoyingly stupid.
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Keep in mind that every print subscriber gets a free top-of-the-line digital subscription. Its actually cheaper to get the paper edition and recycle it then it is to just get the online, in fact, which is annoyingly stupid.
Subscription prices for my local paper follow that same model, actually. It is silly - I save a few bucks a month over a digital-only subscription by subscribing to the weekend (Friday through Sunday) print editions, which comes with free access to their everyday digital edition.
The digital edition sucks, and was obviously designed by people who only understand print... but that's another matter.
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It has to do with the fact that they're getting twice the advertising revenue out of you if you get the paper version and don't both reading the paper.
They get paid for the ads in the paper that you do read and paid for the ads embedded on the online pages you do read.
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Exactly: the big "problem" with online advertising is that it can be tracked, and so it's obvious that people mostly ignore it. So it exposes advertising as much less valuable than it has been presented as before.
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Just because it's not true, don't let that get in the way of your stupid comment:
https://www.nytimesathome.com/hd/101/form/
Daily Delivery (7 Days) – $5.85 per week More Details
The Weekender (Friday–Sunday) – $3.80 per week More Details
Saturday–Sunday – $3.15 per week More Details
Weekday (Monday–Friday) – $3.10 per week More Details
Home delivery subscribers get free digital access to NYTimes.com **
and the NYTimes smartp
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Hmm, neither am I but 3.10 * 4 seems to work out to less than $15. I thought all home delivery folks got free 7 day digital subscriptions.
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Just because it's not true, don't let that get in the way of your stupid comment:
Weekday (Monday–Friday) – $3.10 per week More Details
Home delivery subscribers get free digital access to NYTimes.com **
and the NYTimes smartphone and tablet apps.
Plus, home delivery subscribers can share their digital access with a family member
at no additional charge.
I pay $15/month for digital access 7 days a week.. I'm no math major, but last time I checked 4 * $5.85 > $15
Yup. However, 4 * $3.10 < $15. But than you for playing.
Re:Well... (Score:4)
Unless of course getting the Sat/Sun or Mon-Fri editions and you get the online subscription as well.
In which case $15 > $3.15 * 4 or $15 > $3.10
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Home delivery subscribers get free digital access to NYTimes.com **
I pay $15/month for digital access 7 days a week.. I'm no math major, but last time I checked 4 * $5.85 > $15
You are confusing "home delivery" with "daily delivery." Whether you are right in practice, the site quoted indicates that $3.10 per week will get you digital access for less than the price you pay for digital access.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep in mind that every print subscriber gets a free top-of-the-line digital subscription. Its actually cheaper to get the paper edition and recycle it then it is to just get the online, in fact, which is annoyingly stupid.
Stupid, but economically sensible given the environment. Print advertising rates are set based on circulation, so simply sending a paper to someone earns money for the Times, whether they read it or not. If you assume that (advertising income per paper subscriber) - (cost of printing a paper) > (web subscription cost) - (paper subscription cost), the Times makes more money when you sign up for the cheaper paper edition than when you sign up for online only.
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You have to understand their revenue model. They make money delivering you that paper. More home delivery subscribers = higher ad rates.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
This is easy to explain from a business point of view, although difficult to explain from a logical point of view.
Print eyeballs are about 10 times more valuable [publishing2.com] than digital eyeballs.
Therefore the main concern is expanding print subscribers.
One way to do that is to offer digital previews that are effectively teasers to entice users to get the print edition. In order to ensure that you get the print edition, and not the digital edition, they charge more for digital alone than for digital + print. Note that the NYT has no problem if you only access their content online. There are no "print monitors" that track which printed articles have been read. As far as the NYT is concerned, you can burn the print paper as soon as it hits your door, as they will get paid by the subscription numbers. So the NYT has a single goal -- to sell more print editions, but the consumers of the NYT want the easiest access to NYT times data, which may be online. The solution is to require the purchase of a print edition in order to access the data online, and to discourage customers from only accessing the data online.
Underlying all of this is a very broken business model on the part of the paper as well as on the part of advertising companies. We have much more data about online advertising than other forms of advertising, and this data describes how ineffective digital advertising is. But instead of assuming that this applies to all forms of advertising, through sheer inertia, advertisers have determined that this is an odd quirk of online advertising only, which means all other forms of advertising, for which we have less reliable data, continue to be able to command a premium over online advertising.
All of this is a detriment to the development of rich content online sites, and a subsidy to tree and television based sites.
By the way, Hulu faces the same problem with obtaining add revenues for shows online versus the add revenues that networks can charge. This is why the networks would rather you watch a show on television than watch the same show online. They use the online shows as a teaser or advertisement for the on-air shows, doing things such as delaying programs or limiting the availability of programs while giving the online audience a sample of their content.
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If you are thinking that a lot of the 300k website subscribers are actually print subscribers getting the website for free, then you are mistaken. The NYT has a circulation of 900k, so that figure obviously can't be included among the 300k.
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Keep in mind that every print subscriber gets a free top-of-the-line digital subscription. Its actually cheaper to get the paper edition and recycle it then it is to just get the online, in fact, which is annoyingly stupid.
Cheaper to have a single home land-line phone, too. Odd how many people have mobile phones, isn't it?
Did you skip the reading part? If a single home landline came with a mobile phone for less than the price of a mobile phone alone, you'd have a landline.
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You don't get a free cell phone with a land line.
In this case the paper edition is cheaper comes with the more expensive on line version free. That seems pretty backwards/
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In this case the paper edition is cheaper comes with the more expensive on line version free. That seems pretty backwards/
It isn't particularly backwards when you realize that they make more from print advertisers to have one additional 'paid' print subscriber than it costs them to actually print and deliver one additional copy.
If you buy the online-only subscription you're costing them ad revenue.
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My cell phone is free with the land line. I just have to pay an $80 service charge per month. Blew your argument out the window, huh?
No, you seemed to confirm it. If you got a free mobile line with a landline for less than the mobile line, people would buy the landline and not use it, rather than paying more for an unteatherd mobile. And your argument that you get a free mobile line for only $80 per month (you must be using one of those interesting definitions of "free") doesn't seem to work well with the argument. In fact, it seems like you completely missed the argument, as opposed to blowing it.
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Unless your single home land-line phone comes with free mobile service, your analogy is way off.
drop in the bucket... (Score:2)
Compared to even obscure little slashdot.
Honestly, they should be over 1,000,000 already if they were to be as successful as they claimed to be. and how much you want to bet they are counting the paper subscribers that logged in to set up their online account, so the real number is far lower.
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And I assume that the majority of the traffic that goes though /. hasn't actually signed up at all. Far more visitors than accounts.
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Compared to even obscure little slashdot.
The New York Times, like The Economist or The Wall Street Journal, is considered a must-read for the professional, the decision-maker. Slashdot is light entertainment.
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I read both ... and I think you have it backwards.
Taco and the iPod (Score:3, Interesting)
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Am I missing something here?
Ads, most likely. Adblock (in Opera at least and I think Firefox too) seems to allow you to go right through the paywall (although it did block me twice. Weird.)
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Frankly, that seems pretty fair.
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You're part of the 300,000, you just haven't noticed it yet. The NYT gives away bulk subscription at pennies on the dollar to some of its media-partners. The media-partner gives you a cookie, so you can access the article they link you to. It's a win/win scenario for everyone involved.
You're oblivious to the whole thing and you still get your free content. And the NYT still gets to claim high "paid" subscription numbers to brag about to its advertisers. The only losers are potentially the uninformed adverti
Need more numbers (Score:2)
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C/P from Alexa
Statistics Summary for nytimes.com
Nytimes.com is ranked #87 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. Approximately 12% of visits to it are referred by search engines, and the site has been online since 1994. Nytimes.com is located in the US. Visitors to the site spend approximately 80 seconds on each pageview and a total of five minutes on the site during each visit. Ranked 29 in the USA. 325,546 sites linking into the New York Times's website.
the devil's bike shed (Score:1)
Over all, I think they've handling this well. I just wish they would display the number of views remaining where it greats me every day with the phrase "Welcome, ohsupremeleader".
Actually, my NYT user name is from the Slartibartfast school of almost filthy. Refer to someone that way in the joint, they'd carry you out in a box. It combines the adolescent directness of fartface with the oozitude of sloppy seconds. I guess I was none too thrilled about the mandatory sign-up.
But honestly, they have pretty
Paywall only works for large papers (Score:3)
I'm glad to see the NY Times is able to make some good revenue off their site, but this probably only works for the larger papers.
Large influential papers like the NY Times and Wall St. Journal have a certain level of clout and original content that people are willing to pay for. It's highly unlikely that your local newspaper is going to make any reasonable amount of money off of creating a paywall. Most local papers feature largely wire stories you can find online from thousands of other papers. More circumstantial -- but it's also been my observation that the "younger generations" increasingly don't care about local interest stories or Prep Sports that may be in the local papers -- which is usually the only original content they offer.
So in the long run, I can see this saving a handful of the largest national papers, but I feel most local papers will be in even more trouble in the future.
Cookie (Score:1)
LOL. All you have to do to get around the pay wall is to delete the cookie they send over or just block it using no-script. Works like a charm every time. I will not pay for something they make obviously simple to get around.
Cookies (Score:2)
I wonder how effective these paywalls would be if more people realized you can simply clear your cookies to bypass it.
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I wonder what percentage of people are honest?
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See the parent I was replying to.
It is a payrope (Score:5, Insightful)
Paywalls block all content, and are flawed (and are what the
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The NYT allows me 20 free articles a month, so your numbers are suspect.
However, that limit does not include articles linked from, for example, Google News or any Google search. Which makes it fairly easy to get around.
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I have never once seen any NYT paywall page - but yet ironically do run into a WP "register to see more" pages every now and then which is killed by clearing cookies (which for me with cookieculler is just closing and reopening the browser).
Either way, as you intimate, NYT are not making it impossible, or even difficult, to see their content for
They could learn something from Slashdot (Score:2)
I was surprised to find out that they still show advertising to paid subscribers, in particular annoying Flash based advertising.
Luckily there is Adblock.
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I was surprised to find out that they still show advertising to paid subscribers, in particular annoying Flash based advertising.
And this is surprising ....... why? Perhaps you have never read an actual newspaper, which is not free, and contains lots of advertising.
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The costs barley cover wha it take to get the newspaper to you.
If you remove the delivery charge and printing costs, you would think it would be free w/ Advertising, or cost with no/ advertising. Not both.
Plus my newspapers ads don't move, flash, bing , ding, blink or honk.
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They still need to pay for the creation / layout of the content, even if printing/distribution costs are near zero. I wonder how those costs break down.
Hard to resist subscription (Score:2)
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Attitudes such as these, where there is reluctance to pay a nominal amount for a great product is what forces companies to dole out crap (the reason chinese crap beat out US goods). Thank god for economist, the WSJ and the NY Times - atleast there is some quality journalism still around.
Incidentally, I did recently pay for a subscription to the Economist. It is a reasonable rate for quality, and I get both a print and digital version. The digital version is DRM-free, shall we say, and I can access it anywhere and in anyway that I want.
Good grief. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody on slashdot would care about stupid paywall sites if you would do the most basic of editing tasks and stop linking to them.
That LITTLE? (Score:2)
The article says they don't included the 100,000 Ford Motor gave away for free. Nor does that number included the 800,00 paper delivery people that got it for free. Considering that they about 35 million homes get paper deliver, that means over 34 million people get the paper delivery and REFUSED the electronic one.
OK, so 900,000 people got it for free and 324,000 people to actually buy? Out of a potential market of 35 million people? If you give away 9 to get 3 people out of every 350
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Did you just pull those numbers out of your ass or what? According to their annual report their average daily circulation (home delivery and news stand) is about 900,000. Where did you get that ridiculous 35 million number from?
I am quite sure that the NYT, unlike you, know what success is. Success is being able to keep the paper operating, and hopefully make a profit.
Limited time promotion! (Score:2)
They are no doubt bolstering that number with a limited time promotion.
For years I accessed their content on the iPhone and web. Their content is first class but then they demanded $45/month for all devices (including iPad). I found other avenues - no big deal. I did miss it on the iApple devices but nothing earth shattering.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, they advertised $0.99 for full access for two months. Not bad, I think their content is good enough I would pay something for it, but as the old joke go
And all 300,000... (Score:3)
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Can you elaborate why?
The way I see it, either you're the client, since you are paying a subscription, or the advertisers are the client, in which case you are just a product sold to advertisers.
I gladly pay my 15$/month to my local newspaper. It helps to guarantee their editorial independence, which is why I read their newspaper.
Otherwise, please elaborate on how we could be non-idiotic and have alternative business models. The only one that comes to mind is citizen journalism, such as Indymedia, which I v
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Thanks for clarifying. You state valid and interesting points. I agree that paper is deprecated, by "newspaper" I meant news site or whatever, in reference to your 300 000 idiots.
With regards to your second point, I pay to support journalistic independence and editorial integrity. I don't have time to read the news every minute. I take around 15 minutes to read the news in the morning from 5 websites (1 is my local newspaper, the others are a mix of Canadian, British and French). I also like to listen to th
Easiest way around the paywall (Score:3)
Just use Safari's "Reader" function. It extracts the actual article from behind the paywall overlay and makes it easily readable. I don't know how long they'll leave that vulnerability there though, so enjoy it while it lasts.
this just in... (Score:2)
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300k people don't know how to delete cookies.
300K people actually want to pay for quality content. You can't send reporters all over the world, and have offices in other countries, or even pay professional reporters living wages with the revenue from banner ads alone.
Sounds like the right number (Score:2)
close and reopen browser resets month count (Score:2)
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It is, but AC is right that another way around the paywall is to just remove the &gwh=... from the URL. Works like a charm, and I think there are even automated tools to do that.
Interestingly, I can also browse freely at work without having either cookie issues or monkeying with URLs. I'm guessing that somebody with the same public IP has a subscription, so NYTimes just assumes everything's fine.
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Double counting anyone?
Probably.
As rjstanford pointed out:
Keep in mind that every print subscriber gets a free top-of-the-line digital subscription. Its actually cheaper to get the paper edition and recycle it then it is to just get the online, in fact, which is annoyingly stupid.
So yeah - every paper subscriber is a digital subscriber, even if they:
Haven't actually set up an account.
Don't care.
Don't know.
They also get access to all the various "app" versions of their shit AND they have the ability to share access to a friend/family member.
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The 300000 quoted are just the people with only a digital subscription. So no they aren't double counting.
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How many of those did they give away?
I remember when the paywall thing started they were giving tons of those away.
If the digital version includes ads I will never buy it.
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No, just stuff that has ads. Either you get me to watch advertising or I will pay. You can't have both.
I pay for netflix, which has no ads. I use only the free Hulu since it has ads.