News Corp. reports that total subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal grew 19% in Q2 fiscal year 2021 compared to the prior year. The Journal’s total subscriptions for the quarter grew to a record average of 3.22 million.
Digital Subscriptions Pop
Newspaper brands cite digital subscriptions as key to their business model transformation. In an encouraging sign, The Wall Street Journal’s digital-only subscriptions grew 28% in Q2 to an average of 2.46 million. Furthermore, digital only subscriptions represented 3 in 4 of total subs at the newspaper.
The strength in WSJ digital subscriptions helped to increase Dow Jones’ circulation revenue by 8%.
Record Increase in Dow Jones Digital Ad Revenue
Advertising revenues at Dow Jones in general decreased by 4%. This was primarily due to a 29% decline in print advertising revenues for The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s. News Corp. blames COVID-19 for this negative result. Meanwhile, digital ad revenue at Dow Jones rose by 29% compared to the prior year. This was a record rise for digital advertising.
News Corp. mentions that COVID-19 has lowered demand for single copy and amenity (i.e. hotel) newspapers “driven by decreased foot traffic resulting from remote working, social distancing measures and other government restrictions.” While many of the company’s other U.S., UK, and Australia based papers likely were impacted by this, The Wall Street Journal probably wasn’t hit as much. Historically, subscriptions made up the overwhelming majority of circulation at the Journal.
New York Post
The New York Post digital network surged to reaching 141 million unique visitors in December 2020. That is compared to 95 million uniques in the prior year.
News Corp. reports that the Post was among the newspapers impacted by lower single-copy sales revenue. The New York based newspaper did see an increase in digital adverting revenue in the quarter.
