FT's lose lose

2 October 2007 By Una Galani Follow @ugalani

The mogul’s hints that he’s going to turn wsj.com into a free site leave FT.com with an unappealing choice. The bold option would be to follow suit but risk losing $20m of revenue immediately. The alternative, which FT.com is adopting, is to tweak its subscription model. That risks losing market share.

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The Financial Times newspaper will from midOctober change the business model for its website, FT.com. Users will have free access for up to 30 articles a month; access to anything above will require a subscription. The FT.com's existing subscriptiononly model charges users based on tiers of information. Last week the New York Times scrapped its subscription charges for articles on its website.

Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corporation and new owner of the Wall Street Journal, has publicly mulled scrapping subscription charges for the WSJ.com and pursuing an advertising funded model. Peter Chernin, the president of News Corporation, said two weeks ago We don't want to buy the FT. News Corp will crush it.

FT.com and WSJ.com were both established in 1995. The FT.com has 101,000 subscribers accounting for an estimated $20m revenue, against the 983,000 WSJ.com subscribers generating approximately $65m. Online advertising revenue grew more than 30% at both groups in 2006.

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