Newsday Pay Wall Apparently Leads to 47% Decline in Visitors

Newsday.com, which has put unlimited access to its content behind a pay wall, is finding what most of you would have predicted: it is losing readers. But Cablevision may be banking on a business model it has used in the past: providing "no incremental cost" access for customers who buy other Cablevision products.

In December 2009, unique visitors declined 47 percent while page views fell 32 percent compared to December 2008.

In December, Newsday.com had 1.4 million unique visitors and 18.9 million page views, according to Nielsen. That was down from 2.7 million and 27.8 million, respectively, for the month in 2008.

December was the second full month where Newsday's policy of charging people $5 a week for unlimited access to the site was in effect. People who subscribe to home delivery of the paper, or receive broadband service from its parent Cablevision, do not have to pay extra.

That provides another clue to the success or failure of "pay walls." Cablevision has ways of supplying "no incremental cost" viewership in the same way that it provides "no incremental cost" access to its metro Wi-Fi network.

If a person is a subscriber to Cablevision's fixed broadband access service, then use of the Wi-Fi network is available at no extra cost.

Cablevision does not appear to expect the new pay model to "materially" impact revenues in the "near term." One reason: many people interested in the site also receive the paper at home or get Cablevision high-speed Internet service.