Confidence in understanding what readers will pay for is driving a move to a freemium digital subscription model for News Corp Australia's paid-for daily regional.

The October move will follow experience with a variety of models on the group's metro mastheads and affect its Darwin (NT News), Geelong (Advertiser), Townsville (Bulletin), Cairns (Post), Gold Coast (Bulletin) and Hobart (Mercury) properties.

At the INMA World Congress in London in May, customer relationship marketing general manager Victoria Turner told how the group had learned that the more stories it blocked, "the more subscriptions have been driven".

The regionals move - which comes ahead of News' subject-to-approval acquisition of APN News & Media's Australian regionals - will be accompanied by packaged subscription deals which mirror those introduced by APN last year. Head of metro and regional publishing Damian Eales says the the freemium model had proven more successful than the metered model, with freemium papers generating twice the number of premium content subscriptions than titles with a metered model.

"We are developing a real confidence in determining which pieces of content customers are willing to pay for and which pieces of content customers aren't willing to pay for but offer an enormous benefit from an advertiser perspective," he says.

The rollout has been preceded (a report says 'pre-empted', which means forestalled, but we don't think that is what they intended) by a systematic launch of new digital print replica editions.

Packages will offer a variety of bundling options across print, digital and News' metro titles. In Queensland and northern NSW, APN's regional dailies now include 'free' access to News tabloid metro sites, and News national daily The Australian has begun bundling digital access to the Wall Street Journal.

News has also had success with print subscribers taking up packages which include digital access. Eales says the metro mastheads are doing best with a package which includes weekend print newspapers and seven-day digital access, and he expects regional readers to go the same way.

The decline in its print circulations has almost helved in the past two years, and is expected to do the same in the year ahead. "Combined with our growing digital subscription base, we now have more customers paying more money for more content than ever before," he says.