News Corp. debates giving up 'digital savior,' The Daily
The media giant is trying to figure out whether it can turn losses around on its iPad publication, according to The New York Times.
News Corp. has put The Daily, the iPad publication it introduced last year as "a digital savior" of newspapers, on probation, The New York Times reported.
The news and entertainment giant is trying to decide if the publication, the company's first daily publication created specifically for the tablet, could turn around losses that were estimated at roughly $30 million a year, according to unnamed sources.
This comes weeks after News Corp. founder, chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch confirmed that the media conglomerate would separate its publishing assets, including The Daily, from its fast-growing entertainment assets.
The organization unveiled The Daily last year in an Apple-like manner. Details of the tablet publication, designed with the consultation of Steve Jobs, were kept secret until an event at New York's Guggenheim Museum of Art. The application features 100 pages of news and information a day with HD-quality video and 360-degree interactive photos, and costs $39.99 a year to subscribe.
In February, The Daily said it had 100,000 subscribers and 250,000 unique readers each month, according to the Times.