Re: Err...
I can't help but feel that something has been rather badly missed in this account.
I'd be interested in a commercial overview of the Reg's business model. Doesn't need to give away any secrets (and anybody professionally involved in on-line publishing can estimate these fairly well anyway), but what are the big chunks of cost for bring this august publication to my desk? So that's £x per annum per regular reader, with N% journalism, Y% server and bandwidth, Z% other costs and margin. What (beyond the obvious) is the impact of ad-blocking on your business, and so forth.
Back in 2012, some 6.6m "uniques" per month were claimed. Assuming a bit of growth let's say 7.5m for last year, guessing turnover at £2.5m, that's implying that the total cost per regular reader is about 30p a year.
Where this is going is (ignoring the practicalities) what would Situation Publishing need to charge us lot for access to the Reg? I appreciate that you'd like to charge as much as you possibly can, but that isn't going to happen. If half the unique visitors would pay £2 a year, that would be turnover of £7.5m a year - better or worse than you're doing now? I suspect that you could actually get that to £4 or $4 a year for a third of the readership.
Personally I'd be willing to stump up a £4 a year fee for my fix. Fellow commentards, what do you think? Are my guesses wildly wrong? And if not, would you be willing to pay a mini-subscription that amounts to 1.1p per day?