“The Daily” was a big deal. Its introduction marked the beginning of Apple’s subscription service, and an attempt by undead necromancer Rupert Murdoch to breach a younger, hipper market by making them pay for curated news. It was an incredibly buggy launch, and once the free trial period of the service was up, it hemorrhaged readers like a hemophiliac at a dodgeball tournament.
During yesterday’s quarterly earnings call, the company announced that it lost $10 million during the first quarter, which isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. Pretty much every publication that made a heavy push into iOS suffered losses as they dealt with startup and conversion costs to get onto the new platform.
Even though it’s not quite as bad as it could be, I don’t have high hopes for “the Daily”. I don’t think there’s enough of a market for paid, curated news on the iPad do sustain enough subscriptions to pay a New York office full of young staffers.
Written By 