Cablevision Systems Corp. may soon pull the plug on free online access for Newsday, its Long Island daily.

Tom Rutledge, Cablevision’s chief operating officer, announced in a conference call that the company is planning to end free distribution of its content and wants to news gathering a service for the customers. The Newsday site has been enhanced with a new look.

Newsday has an average daily circulation of 377,517, which makes it nation’s 10th top-selling newspaper. It is also the largest newspaper in New York’s Long Island. Cablevision bought Newsday last summer for $650 million from Tribune Co.

Cablevision has already declared its problem with flattening advertising revenue. Cablevision executives believe that they will be able to find results with this new strategy even though they have some problems right now.

One idea that was thought of was to grant free access of Newsday.com to the Cablevision’s cable TV subscribers. The company plans to charge other visitors, thought the plan is not final yet.

According to comScore Inc., Newsday saw 2.54 million unique visitors online in January. This was 16 percent up from the same month last year.

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