I reckon I've only brought one copy of the courier in the past couple of years, but I too read it online most days,
Same with the Examiner, and there's also a couple of other local sites I look at probably at least once a week, and I read the BBC site daily as well as a few others as and when they tweet a headline that gets my interest
The Newspaper industry is on its backside, I think the Courier has done well to stay as a daily paper for this long, Halifax afterall is only a small town. Can't have a massive circulation
While online news is the way forward, I don't think people want to pay for it, there is so much news available online for free, why pay? Unless they can offer masses of local news, high quality reporting and opinion features. it'll struggle to build up a membership. Couldn't charge more than a couple of quid a week but when that adds up to £100 a year people will be put off by that figure, despite probably having spent the same on printed news in the same period
Another Implication of the Courier going weekly could be with the sponsorship deal with the club.