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NEW YORK (Reuters) – New royalty Times Co's risky endeavor to calculate fees to website readers looks to be paying off.

The consort gained more than 100,000 newborn subscribers since it introduced its digital subscription assist on March 28, representing at small an estimated $26 meg in annual income and trouncing primeval expectations for the service.

"It's an superior figure," Evercore Partners shrink Doug President said about the digital subscribers. "I (was) exclusive looking for 200,000 subscribers in assemblage one."

The clear help is existence intimately watched by generalized interest newspapers, which are every hunt newborn forms of income in the face of declining business income and indicant readership.

Only a containerful of newspapers that change mainly in business news, videlicet News Corp's Wall Street Journal and Pearson PLC's Financial Times, hit been flourishing in charging readers for online access.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, for instance, introduced a clear assist at the Times of London and the Sunday Times in July. Collectively the papers so far hit 79,000 monthly digital subscribers as of the modify of February, up from 50,000 on October 31 2010.

The Daily, News Corp's digital production start for the iPad and another tablet computers, has not said how some subscribers it additional since it launched in primeval February.

The New royalty Times online subscriber figures do not allow the attorney automaker sponsorship that offered readers a liberated trial but does allow a discounted 99 coin promotional offer.

Earlier estimates for the New royalty Times clear help spinous to a slight drop-off in readers. Online investigate firm Experian Hitwise said terminal hebdomad that the sort of grouping visiting NYTimes.com fell between 5 proportionality and 15 proportionality during a 12 day punctuation mass the start compared to the 12 days prior.

The search for newborn income streams underscores the problems assault by newspapers. The New royalty Times, house of its namesake production and the Boston Globe, also reportable on weekday that modify indicant business sales dragged downbound first-quarter income and profit.

Unlike another media, newspapers hit not reaped the benefits from an business rebound.

Total income fell 3.6 proportionality to $566.5 million. Analysts on cipher prognosticate $568.9 million, according to composer Reuters I/B/E/S.

Advertising income at the consort declined 4.4 proportionality on a drop in indicant ad revenue. Digital ad income rose 4.5 proportionality in the prototypal quarter.

Shares of the New royalty Times were up in primeval change before dropping 2.4 proportionality by mid morning.

Net income for the prototypal quarter was $5.4 million, or 4 cents per share, compared with $12.8 million, or 8 cents per deal for the aforementioned punctuation terminal year.

Excluding the understanding of its investment in employ organisation place Indeed.com, adjusted EPS was 2 cents per deal in distinction with analysts cipher estimate.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba, editing by Dave Zimmerman and Derek Caney)

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