Why Murdoch’s The Daily Doesn’t Fly

Mondaynote reporting:
Fact is, The Daily never took-off. Six months after its high-wattage launch, it only claimed 80,000 paid-for subscribers. Today, Jesse Angelo mentions a mere 100,000 subs. It is both far from the 500,000 necessary to break-even and totally out of step with the growth of the iPad (and the iPhone, and the Android) installed base.
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For The Daily, this might be its first problem: It is everything and nothing special at the same time. It’s not a tabloid, but it doesn’t carry in-depth, enterprise journalism either. It’s a sophisticated container for commodity news — i.e. the news that you can get everywhere, in real-time and for free. If I crave celebrity fodder, I go to TMZ or to the Huffington Post. If I want business news, I’ll find everything on CNN Money or Business Insider, all very efficiently and appealingly edited. No need to go through the tedious download of a 100 pages-plus issue.
The Daily’s inherent competition with the web (and mobile) was completely underestimated. Real time is now mandatory, so is the ability to generate conversations. For The Daily, a comparison of last weekend’s newscycle is cruel. Its coverage of the Mitt Romney tax return controversy triggered 179 comments on The Daily vs. 28,464 comments on the Huffington Post. (Note the HuffPo built it on a 150 words Associated Press story and a one minute video segment from CNN — that’s the digital version of the multiplication of the loaves…)
The Daily is like an old concept in a high-tech package. Some draw a parallel with USA Today, the first truly national newspapers launched in 1982.
Another key question for The Daily’s future pertains to its business model. On average, according to the Newspaper Association of America, 70% of the revenue of US dailies comes form advertising, and 14% of the ad revenue comes from digital. By any means, The Daily should have been loaded with ads. There is almost none.
http://www.mondaynote.com/2012/07/16/why-murdochs-the-daily-doesnt-fly/