Hundreds of thousands of downloads for The Daily

Digitial newspaper The Daily was developed at a cost of around $30 million, an executive has said
Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation Chairman & CEO, speaks at the launch of the electronic newspaper designed for the Apple iPad, The Daily in New York. The digital newspaper has tallied hundreds of thousands of downloads since its launch a month ago, its publisher has said.

The Daily, the digital newspaper created for Apple's iPad by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, has tallied hundreds of thousands of downloads since its launch a month ago, its publisher has said.

"It's going great," Greg Clayman said at the paidContent 2011 conference in New York. "We're not disclosing the exact numbers (of downloads) but it's in the hundreds of thousands."

Although The Daily has extended a free trial period until March 21, Clayman said a number of readers had already opened their wallets to pay the of 99 cents a week.

He declined to say exactly how many paid subscribers The Daily has signed up, joking only that it's "more than one and less than a billion."

Clayman said . had agreed to the same revenue-sharing that Apple is offering to other publishers with the California-based gadget-maker taking a 30 percent cut of each subscription.

"We get the same that everybody else does," he said.

Clayman said News Corp. was not "locked into" a single platform for The Daily, which is currently only available on the , and it would eventually be offered on tablet computers running Google's software.

The digital publication Tha Daily is News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch's latest try to to charge readers for online content
The Daily, an electronic newspaper designed for the Apple iPad, is seen at a press event in New York. The publication has hired a staff of about 100 people from the New Yorker, Forbes, the New York Post and other publications.

"We want to be where the consumers are," he said.

Apple is the tablet market leader with sales of more than 15 million iPads, Clayman noted, but "we do expect the Android tablet market will grow."

Describing The Daily, which News Corp. launched on February 2 at an event in New York attended by the 79-year-old Murdoch, the publisher said "it really is something new."

"It's not a magazine," he said. "It's not a newspaper and yet it is because it publishes news every day. It's not a website and yet we're connected to the Internet.

"What the iPad does is it allows you to create something brand new."

Clayman said The Daily, which was developed at a cost of around $30 million, was distinct from other News Corp. properties, which include newspapers in Australia, Britain and the United States and the Fox television networks.

"The key is we're building a brand," he said. "We do work with other News Corp. entities... (but) we're not an aggregator aggregating content throughout News Corp."

The Daily, which has hired a staff of about 100 people from the New Yorker, Forbes, the New York Post and other publications, arrives on a subscriber's iPad every morning.

The digital publication is Murdoch's latest attempt to find a way to charge readers for content online in an era of shrinking newspaper circulation and eroding print advertising revenue.

Speaking at the launch event a month ago, Murdoch said he would consider it a success "when we sell millions."

(c) 2011 AFP

Citation: Hundreds of thousands of downloads for The Daily (2011, March 4) retrieved 28 March 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2011-03-hundreds-thousands-downloads-daily.html
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