Someone has an overinflated sense of their value

That someone is the New York Times with regards to digital subscriptions. [Link]

Does The Times really think the mass audience is going to decide their $455/year is better spent on The Times rather than getting 20+ free articles/month from The Times plus The Wall Street Journal ($207/year) plus The Economist ($110/year) plus say The Daily ($39/year) for good measure, and still having ~$100 left over each year?

Worse, their payment plans are more complicated than any of the others listed.  John Gruber has assessed the numerous drawbacks of payment complexity in some detail.

Heck, even the URL for their payment plans is more complicated than anyone else’s: http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp0145.html

Here’s what The Times doesn’t seem to get: sooner or later readers are going to cancel their print subscriptions and go digital. The Times’ pricing scheme is only going to encourage them to go with someone else’s digital. 

I don’t like to make predictions, but I have a hard time imagining their current “pay labyrinth” scheme even lasting til the end of the year. I sure hope it doesn’t last long. It’s sad that instead of competing for the future by pricing for the digital age, The Times has opted to fight an inevitably doomed battle to hold on to the past.