New York Times adds 43,000 digital subscribers

NEW YORK: The New York Times added more than 40,000 digital subscribers in the third quarter but advertising revenue continued to slide.

The New York Times Co. said Thursday that it posted a net profit of $15.7 million in the quarter which ended in September compared with a loss of $4.3 million in the same quarter a year ago.

Revenue declined 3.1 per cent to $537.2 million at the Times Co., which owns The Boston Globe, International Herald Tribune and About.com in addition to the flagship New York Times.

Total advertising revenue was down 8.8 per cent to $262 million while circulation revenue increased 3.4 per cent to $237 million.

Print advertising revenue fell 10.4 per cent in the quarter while digital advertising revenue was down 4.5 per cent.

Robinson said page-view declines for the site were “less than we projected”and had dropped an average of 11 per cent since the Times began charging online readers in March.The Times Co. said it had 324,000 paid subscribers to digital versions of the newspaper at the end of the third quarter compared with 281,000 at the end of the second quarter.

She said there had been 7.3 million downloads of the newspaper’s iPhone news application and 2.8 million downloads of its iPad news app.