The overwhelming majority of people will bypass The Times newspaper's internet content altogether rather than pay for access, a survey has found.
The 2010 Digital Entertainment Survey polled 1,592 UK consumers online, and found that nine out of ten people would not pay £1-per-day or £2-per-week to gain access to the paper or its Sunday stablemate online.
The survey quizzed people on whether they would pay for any news content online. 71 per cent said they believed there to be sufficient free content, but if they could be persuaded to pay for a new source, the majority said their preference would be the BBC site.
Owners of the Times, News International, introduced the paywall this month amid a radical revamp of how it intends to still make money as e-news steadily eclipses print. It unveiled a new, multimedia heavy website to enhance the move and is confident it will build real and meaningful relationships between its readers and journalists.
The figures from the survey correlate with the opinion of Sunday Times editor, John Witherow, who suggested last month that “the vast majority of readers” - perhaps more than 90 per cent – would be lost once paywalls are introduced.
