With just 120,000 weekly readers, The Daily prospects look dim

Bloomberg | paidContent
The Daily has just 120,000 readers each week, far short of the 500,000 that it needs to break even, reports Bloomberg’s Edmund Lee. “The Daily’s proving to be a great R&D experiment but probably not a viable business,” news industry analyst Ken Doctor says. Staci Kramer at paidContent does the math based on how many people likely are paying for The Daily and figures that the publication is running a large deficit every week, even without accounting for initial investments, subscription discounts and Apple’s cut. “The shelf life of other News Corp. digital experiments suggests the Daily isn’t likely to survive, no matter how respectable the numbers, unless it shows real signs it can get in the black,” she writes. Doctor suggests that one lesson is that it’s hard for a new brand to make it on a new platform. Kramer, though, says that when you compare The Daily’s numbers to Hearst and Conde Nast publications, it doesn’t look as bad. || Earlier: “The Daily” iPad app approaching 1 million downloads | Who exactly is the intended audience of The Daily?