I don’t think your newspaper analogy works very well here.

Newspapers had willing subscribers especially since they had few alternatives. Their subscriber base was not niche at all.

These newspapers were also heavily subsidized by not only advertisements but paid classified ads.

You either caught the local/evening news on TV or subscribed to a small handful of locally delivered papers. Maybe they also deliver major national newspapers like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

The willingness to subscribe didn’t go away, the problem is that alternatives quickly arrived that didn’t cost any money.

Free online classifieds ate the newspaper cash cow. People are often still willing to pay for the services that newspapers provided: just see eBay, Autotrader, and Craigslist. The problem is that your local paper can’t match the product that the internet makes available.