Peter Kafka, who writes for the All Things Digital blog, takes note of Long Island-based Newsday's pathetic paywall numbers — a mere 35 subscribers in three months — and wonders how the Star Tribune's "Access Vikings" is doing:

I would be interested, though, in learning how the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune did with “Access Vikings Premium,” a $20-a-year pay wall it put up around most stories about the home team last season.

I could see the thinking behind this one, which showed up around the same time Brett Favre joined the team. And this was the year to try it, since the Vikings had a great season until they blew the NFC Conference game, as is their wont.

But in my personal one-man focus group, the pay wall only served to keep me from visiting StarTribune.com at all. I see now that the paper seems to have dropped the wall around content it used to ask me to pay for, so perhaps I wasn’t the only one. I’ve asked the paper for more details.

Ah, Peter, I'm interested too, which is why I've pressed the Strib for data a couple of times this season, including after Jason DeRusha's paywall-focused interview with publisher Mike Klingensmith last week.

No dice, says Strib spokesman Ben Taylor, holding onto the goods in a way Brad Childress can only envy. "I understand your curiosity — and that of all our competitors," Taylor said Thursday. "But it’s proprietary. We may talk about it at some point."

I know this makes it look like the Strib has bad news to hide — they have recently been a leader in digital disclosure. I'm not sure what competitors would do if the numbers proved awful, or fabulous. But for now, we just don't know how well the Purple Paywall floats 425 Portland's boat.

One thing's for sure: The unpaywalled startribune.com does well when the Vikings do well ... or spectacularly tragically. On Monday, the site hit 4.9 million page views, the fourth-highest total ever — despite the thoroughly depressing Vikings loss. That means three of the four top days in site history are Purple-tinged; the only higher totals came during two days of Favre Mania this summer, and the day after Barack Obama was elected president.