Some of you may have heard that The Onion is testing out a new five-pages-per-month system for paid content—and judging by the comments today, some of you may have some related concerns. First and foremost, this new system will not affect The A.V. Club. It simply doesn’t make sense for us to adopt it, and so we’re not.
As for who it will affect: Only international users, and only readers of The Onion who want access to more than five full articles within 30 days. The new system won’t restrict access to the home page or the individual sections. It also won’t apply to areas where a lot of American troops are deployed in combat, as The Onion recognizes that it has a large fanbase in the armed forces, and it doesn’t wish to charge them for being overseas. They also have better stuff to worry about.
Basically, like a lot of online publishers these days, The Onion is looking for new ways to support itself through a combination of advertising and paid content, and we’ve found through our Kindle and Nook sales especially that many Onion users are willing to pay to read it. (Some of them say they would even buy The Onion over sex or water.) We’ve also found that our many international users, especially those in the UK, are already used to paying for digital content, hence our testing it there. And again, this won't affect The A.V. Club at all.