Latest newspaper and magazine numbers
The latest set of newspaper and magazine readership stats are out, so time to go behind the spin on them.
In February I explained the difference between readership and circulation.
The latest data is on on both readership and circulation. What I look for is the change from a year ago (for some circulation figures the comparison is nine months ago). In descending order of readership increases we have:
- Investigate Magazine: 23.3% increase in readership, no circulation figures
- Herald on Sunday: 19.6% increase in readership, 1.7% increase in circulation
- North & South: 13.4% increase in readership, 5.2% increase in circulation
- National Business Review: 5.4% increase in readership, -5.1% decrease in circulation
- NZ Herald: 4.8% increase in readership, -3.6% decrease in circulation
- Metro: 4.7% increase in readership, -2.6% decrease in circulation
- Listener: 4.0% increase in readership, -3.7% decrease in circulation
- Waikato Times: 3.2% increase in readership, -2.2% decrease in circulation
- Sunday Star-Times: 2.1% increase in readership, -3.5% decrease in circulation
- The Press: 0.9% increase in readership, -2.1% decrease in circulation
- Dominion Post: -0.8% decrease in readership, -3.6% decrease in circulation
- The Independent: -2.9% decrease in readership, -8.7% decrease in circulation
- Sunday News: -5.4% decrease in readership, -5.4% decrease in circulation
- Otago Daily Times: -9.0% decrease in readership, +0.6% increase in circulation
- Computerworld: -13.2% decrease in readership, +1.7% increase in circulation
- Net Guide: -14.9% decrease in readership, -39.0% decrease in circulation
Investigate, HoS and N&S all big winners in the readership stakes. NBR, Herald, Metro and Listener all also achieving growth of over 4%.
UPDATE: Worth pointing out that the figures I am using are comparing year on year. If one compares the latest figures to the previous quarter, it does show different trends such as The Independent up from 31,000 to 33,000 which is a 7% increase. However still 3% lower than a year ago.
August 18th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
GO, Investigate !!!!!!!
All the best for the future of “TGIF”, too………..
August 18th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Hypothesis time. The NZ media has moved to the left over the last 10 years, and also had falling readership and circulation (correlation, not causation). In recent times some of the media have worked out that a large chunk of the NZ population is to the right of the media in general – when more than 50% of the population say they will vote National, constantly bagging National may not be a way to sell more newspapers.
The media that are most associated with either moving back towards the centre, or are seen as being right of centre, seem to be doing best.
– Investigate – right of centre.
– Herald on Sunday – moving to centre from the left
– North and South – haven’t read it for years, can’t comment
– NBR – right of centre
– NZ Herald – moving to centre from left
– Metro – again, haven’t read it
– Listener – seen as moving from far left to more centre, admittedly also improved the quality of their journalism hugely
Perhaps this is the long hoped for (by me at least) market finally making comment on both biased reporting (when pretending to be unbiased) and poor journalism standards? Something to hope for. Also good to see SST, relatively speaking, doing far worse than Herald on Sunday. Perhaps they will at some point work out why?
August 18th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Surely this is some sort of double negative
August 18th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
“Surely this is some sort of double negative
”
Only if you don’t like them
It might be a double positive.
August 18th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Sell crap and people stop buying it. Now if we could get a decent tv news that would sell.
August 18th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
The SST can only keep going down if they keep printing propaganda like yesterday. Mind you, Cate Brett has never been much of an editor, so even if they came over to the dark side they’d still keep haemorraging readers…
August 18th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
As they say in Tui Land
Two negatives make a positive but two positives don’t change anything – right right!
August 18th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Indeed the Sunday Star-Times must be increasingly out of step with its readers, which is why it is losing so many, unless it is just lefties left buying the publication.
The slump under the Brett era (post 2003) is quite remarkable and cannot all be slated at the 2004 arrival of Herald on Sunday.
Her editorship and the SST’s leftist slant must be costing Fairfax millions.
I posted twice on the issue over at No Minister over the weekend.
The contrast with the Herald on Sunday should reinforce the message.
August 18th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Yep, NZ is ripe for the “Fox News” phenomenon; there are huge gaps in the market for the likes of Ian Wishart to fill. I wish “TGIF” all the best. It’s just a pity that NZ is so small that we don’t get the phenomenon of media owners like Murdoch running both Leftwing AND Rightwing media so as to maximise his market penetration………
August 18th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Eh? I don’t get your point about Murdoch PhilBest…Why is one guy owning left and right wing media something that is especially desirable?
August 18th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
The readership figures for a magazine like Investigate essentially relate to Wishart’s personal prominence in the headlines — it’s a measure of masthead recognition. Investigate’s print run is about 12,000 and at a guess it’d sell 10,000 of those, which puts it in the range of Metro.
OTOH, the most recent readership figures look a bit whiffy all round to me — I can’t think of a reason why Metro, to take one example, would show a jump in audience while its circulation continues to trail off.
The way the weekend newspaper market absorbed the Herald on Sunday is quite remarkable — most (but not all) of its sales have been new sales.
I strongly doubt that its recent performance is down to some perceived political stance, though — oddly enough, people generally don’t care about that. It’s doing well because it has some feisty (sometimes overly so) reporters on staff and has broken stories. And frankly, it’s not exactly going gangbusters on circulation anyway — it’s stable in the low 90k range; actually less than it had when there were promotions running in its launch year.
August 18th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Circulation is presumably paid circulation. For Dom Post there are give away copies at Vic Uni and airline departure gates (not sure about the most recent policy on this). Not to mention random copies delivered to households. Seems like a strategic ’splits’ between a ‘paid’ newspaper and a giveaway newspaper, the former for revenue and the latter to boost readership from those who won’t buy (or have to leave for the airport before it is delivered).
August 18th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Spin wussle spin.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
So pleased to see the Dominion Post figures on the decrease, hopefully the trend will continue until it dissapears from the radar altogether. Its contents are utter rubbish by and large, just as well we have access to excellent journalistic content on line.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Journalism online that isn’t in the papers? Where?
August 18th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
You can get it right here, Stephen…
http://www.investigatemagaine.com/tgif15aug08.pdf
August 18th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Stephen, that would be the second issue of TGIF Edition, which has now gone live for non-subscribers four days after release to subscribers…
You can read it here: http://www.investigatemagazine.com/tgif15aug08.pdf
August 18th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Ah Stephen, happy to help, that’ll be TGIF Edition’s second issue, now live online four days after subscribers first got it..
http://www.investigatemagazine.com/tgif15aug08.pdf
August 19th, 2008 at 8:24 am
They wont be getting another cent from em till they dump that labour party mouthpiece and stalanist hack trotter serge.
August 19th, 2008 at 8:30 am
The numbers reflect the reality Russell, irrespective of your suspicions.
Perhaps the falling publications are shit?
August 19th, 2008 at 8:55 am
There’s that excrement argument again. Could be a theme.
August 19th, 2008 at 9:25 am
In all seriousness, the fall in the SST’s circulation has nothing to do with left and right politics. It’s because it finally had some serious competition when APN launched the Herald on Sunday. Before that, Fairfax had the field to itself, with SST for the broadsheet reader and Sunday News as the tabloid. Considering that a new player has entered the market, with a circ of around 90,000, it’s actually remarkable how well the SST figures have held up.
And readership is hardly an inexact science. Ask yourself how a magazine or paper (eg the Listener or the NBR) could possibly sell less and yet be read more? It’s do with calculating pass-on rates in market research, but how exact this could be? Paid circulation is the number to look at.
There is one deserved increase, in my view. North and South had a fantastic redesign under Metro designer Jenny Nichols and lost its carping, right-wing-soccer-mom tone when Robyn Langwell was removed. It’s a much better, broader read now.
August 19th, 2008 at 9:39 am
In all seriousness I know why I stopped buying something and it was politics.
Other peoples reasons are theirs not mine to claim.
Thats what makes me a conservative. I don’t asume to speak for others.
August 19th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Stephen…your wish has been granted…
http://www.investigatemagazine.com/tgif15aug08.pdf
Which is the second issue of TGIF that subscribers received last Friday night…
August 19th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Yes, Murray, but who cares why you — or any one person — stopped buying something? I stopped buying the SST because I got sick of the Bridget Saunders pages. You stopped because you think Cate Brett is a card-carrying socialist. But the subject of the post is broad trends behind circulation and readership.
August 19th, 2008 at 10:23 am
I stopped buying the Herald a few years ago because of their far left world section particularly the Robert Fisk columns
But even though they are more centerist now, the fact is I will probably never buy any newspaper again.
What is the point when it all free online or at work?
August 19th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Was hardly my wish Ian, but noted.