Times curtails its free home delivery service

Days after severing its bulks deal with Ocado , Times Newspapers is curtailing its free home delivery service. The service won't be abandoned – but if you want it you have to sign up for an entire year (previously it was open ended). Either that or accept a 30p per day (£2 a week) delivery fee. And if you want to keep getting a paper statement, that will be £1 a pop. The Times Direct Delivery Service, to give it its proper name, was a great deal when it launched in 2008 , weeks after the Independent launched a paid-for home delivery service. You could sign up for free home delivery of the Times and Sunday Times, on weekdays, weekends or for seven days if you lived within the M25 and couldn't get your papers delivered by your local newsagent, ie, almost everyone. It always amazed me that a large industrialised country like Britain could help invent the supersonic jet but have dreadful trouble delivering a newspaper to my door. Mention this failure to any newspaper executive and they would shout "ruinously expensive", throw up their hands in horror and bemoan the lack of entrepreneurial spirit among the nation's 12-year-olds. And then wonder why newspaper circulations declined. Consider countries like Japan, where the Yomiuri Shimbun has a circulation of about 10m and the Asahi Shimbun about 8m . Their home delivery rates are 99.2% and 99.6% respectively. The vast majority are delivered by sales delivery outlets and not vendors. Back in Britain, the Financial Times has run a delivery service for years, but it was the Independent and the Times that moved in a major way into this area two years ago. It was envisaged as a central plank of circulation strategy, along with cut-price subscribers' booklets bought in advance. So why the change in strategy at the Times? Either the service is at the level of market penetration that Times Newspapers is happy with, or News International chief executive Rebekah Wade thinks she needs to boost the average revenue per Times reader. It is fascinating to watch News International turning bit by bit into BSkyB before your eyes. Home delivery is an extra service, so it seems reasonable to charge for it. In 2008, after launching the service, the Times increased its cover price to match the Daily Telegraph , and has by and large kept it there ever since. Ocado, free home delivery – it appears that News International is battening down the hatches. That cover price rise by the Times in 2008 ended the 15-year price war. Now, let the internet paywall war begin! Hat tip: Ian Tucker