Last week we noted how Cablevision's decision to pay $600 million for Newsday, then put the paper's website behind a paywall, resulted in a grand total of 35 paying subscribers. While Cablevision uses free access to Cablevision TV/broadband and physical Newsday subscribers as an added bonus, it's still a painfully low number. Techdirt directs our attention to a missive to staff members by Newsday executive Tad Smith, who complains the media isn't being fair and that putting up the paywall wasn't about paying customers:Smith complains that the media largely ignored this, but all of the pieces we read clearly spelled out the broader strategy. The problem is, by any metric, Newsday spent $4 million on a site redesign and their viewers are dropping significantly. If there's no interest in actually getting unique paying customers, why put up a paywall? Why not just offer Newsday free solely to Cablevision customers? Meanwhile the "extra value" argument only goes so far. Does anybody really think a customer considering Verizon FiOS stays their hand because of an interest in free access to the Newsday portal?

Perhaps, just perhaps, paywalls just aren't a very good idea, especially if the content you're locking down isn't really all that compelling.