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The new york pastimes
A new wave of bundled and single-product digital subscriptions boosted The New York Times’ profits in Q3.
Okay, so we’ve been saying here that the business behind The New York Times Company hasn’t really been just about the news now for a minute. And while that’s hardly a fact the Gray Lady herself has shied away from — in his debut a…
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The new york pastimes
A new wave of bundled and single-product digital subscriptions boosted The New York Times’ profits in Q3.
Okay, so we’ve been saying here that the business behind The New York Times Company hasn’t really been just about the news now for a minute. And while that’s hardly a fact the Gray Lady herself has shied away from — in his debut as the Times’s new media columnist in 2020, Semafor founder Ben Smith cited its “broadening content mix” as a key reason behind the company’s ability to outmuscle its competition — the observation rings truer with every passing quarter.
Collections; or _______ of joy [7]
In its third-quarter earnings last week, the Times reported that it had added 460,000 digital-only subscribers in the last three months, as bundles and single-product subscribers to products like Cooking and Games helped offset the 130,000 news-only subs it lost over Q3. For context, there are just ~570,000 print-only NYT subscribers left, after 10,000 jumped ship in the same period.
The additions mark the most substantial growth it’s posted across its digital offerings since it started breaking out individual subscriber figures, rather than the number of individual subscriptions those subscribers paid for, back in 2022, as the company’s digital footprint continues to grow.
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All told, The NYT now counts some 12.33 million subscribers across its family of products. The vast majority (11.76 million) of those are for digital-only products — whether that’s people keeping up to date on the NYTimes app, sports fans lapping up the latest analysis from The Athletic, chefs looking for recipe inspo from the Cooking segment, or the millions of people who’ve chiseled some combination of the company’s various mini games into cornerstones of their daily routines.
All the games that are fit to play
When the New York Times made the decision to move The Mini, the smaller version of its iconic crossword which has amassed a devoted following since it launched over a decade ago, behind a paywall in late August, scores of disgruntled gamers rushed to Google to see what the issue was. Naturally, that frustration quickly spilled over onto social media.
Although non-subscribers can still access Wordle and other daily games like Connections and Strands (for now), it’s difficult to imagine a world in which the company’s latest digital sub figures weren’t boosted a little by Mini-mad users finally stumping up some extra cash to carry on playing the crossword every day.
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Paywalling their plethora of addictive mini games makes sense from the Times’s point of view, as revenues from digital subscribers continue to grow as the company’s biggest money-spinner, with Bloomberg forecasting that digital subscribers will account for $1.44 billion of the company’s $2.79 billion revenues this year.
A popular Roblox game being developed for the big screen could test the limits of the recent success of video game film adaptations.
“Grow a Garden,” a gardening sim in which players plant seeds, sell their crops for in-game currency called sheckles, and then use that money to purchase more seeds, is reportedly being adapted as a feature film by production company Story Kitchen (which has adapted other video games for the big and small screen such as “Tomb Raider”). Can we start the awards season buzz now?
The game has become hugely popular, boosting Roblox’s player counts and breaking concurrent user records multiple times in recent months. It was also originally created by a 16-year-old.
No doubt Hollywood, and Roblox, are hoping that every kid-friendly video game adaptation can see the billion-dollar (or close to it) success of Nintendo’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and Microsoft’s “A Minecraft Movie.”
The game has become hugely popular, boosting Roblox’s player counts and breaking concurrent user records multiple times in recent months. It was also originally created by a 16-year-old.
No doubt Hollywood, and Roblox, are hoping that every kid-friendly video game adaptation can see the billion-dollar (or close to it) success of Nintendo’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and Microsoft’s “A Minecraft Movie.”
Thieves are targeting “Pokémon” cards in robberies since they’ve skyrocketed in value
A real-life mishmash of different Team Rocket wannabes is having a lot more success thieving “Pokémon” cards than Jessie and James ever did in their attempts to pilfer Pikachu throughout the anime series.
The Washington Post reports on a string of DC-area heists of “Pokémon” cards, with CGC Cards Vice President Matt Quinn quoted as saying, “Any time you’re carrying around collectibles that are worth money, whether it be gold bars, Pokémon cards, coins, toy trains, or whatever it might be, you have to be vigilant with knowing that you’re carrying collectibles that can be easily stolen from you,” adding that these episodes are happening across the country.
Gotta thieve ’em all is an outgrowth of the massive boom in the value of “Pokémon” cards, with The Wall Street Journal reporting on 3,000% returns earlier this year. Their meteoric rise has been a big boon to GameStop, whose collectibles business has played a critical role in the stabilization and nascent turnaround of its operations.
Both individual cards and unopened packs have been targeted in robberies of stores and personal residences, per the Post report.
Stealing unopened packs of “Pokémon” cards is effectively thieving and buying call options at the same time: an individual pack might not be worth much on its own, but the most valuable cards in the recently released Mega Evolutions set are going for over $1,000. And at about 23 grams per pack and relative differences in security, the logistics seem a lot less onerous than trying to rob a gold dealer.
(Note: I don’t know for sure. I’m not a thief, besides that Klondike bar one time in high school.)
Under the deal, iHeartMedia, which produces shows like “Las Culturistas,” “The Breakfast Club,” and “Jay Shetty Podcast,” would reportedly stop posting full episodes on YouTube — the site that more than a billion people use to watch podcasts every month.
Netflix made a similar deal with Spotify last month and will begin streaming 16 video podcasts produced by Spotify Studios early next year.
According to the Nielsen Gauge, YouTube pulled in 12.6% of all TV viewership in September, compared to 8.3% for Netflix.
Under the deal, iHeartMedia, which produces shows like “Las Culturistas,” “The Breakfast Club,” and “Jay Shetty Podcast,” would reportedly stop posting full episodes on YouTube — the site that more than a billion people use to watch podcasts every month.
Netflix made a similar deal with Spotify last month and will begin streaming 16 video podcasts produced by Spotify Studios early next year.
According to the Nielsen Gauge, YouTube pulled in 12.6% of all TV viewership in September, compared to 8.3% for Netflix.
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