It could be a success even if they don't sell any actual online newspapers. You'll notice that the price for one-day access to the Times online is one pound, ex

It could be a success even if they don't sell any actual online newspapers. You'll notice that the price for one-day access to the Times online is one pound, exactly the same as the cover price of the printed version. The idea, then, is not so much to sell subscriptions but to anchor in people's minds the idea that a newspaper like the Times is something worth paying a pound for. People will be more inclined to pick up a printed newspaper to read on the train if they're not thinking "gee, I could read exactly the same thing online for free, what's the point?" Actually if you think of it as a way of driving people back to printed newspapers, rather than as a new revenue stream in itself, it starts to make a hell of a lot of sense.