National and metro newspapers in biggest ever decline
Australia’s metro and national newspapers have had the worst circulation result in their history, with every paper in the country except for two in decline.
Newspaper Works – the marketing body for the industry – claimed the Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers were “firm”, and blamed the falls on “a patchy economy, skittish consumer behaviour and rising interest rates”.
Fairfax Media’s The Australian Financial Review was worst hit in the last three months with a fall of around 10% for both its Monday to Friday and Saturday editions compared to a year ago. The rate of decline for the AFR increased compared to its 9.7% fall in figures released three months ago.
Its daily national rival The Australian, owned by News Ltd, was down 4% on weekdays and 2.6% for its Saturday edition.
Meanwhile, Fairfax also has the hardest hit metro paper, with the Sun-Herald in Sydney declining by 6.6% to 442,357. Its News Ltd rival the Sunday Telegraph was down 3.2% to 632,009 copies.
The worst performing daily metro was the Canberra Times, which was down 4.7%.
The only papers to stray into positive territory were in Melbourne, where the Saturday edition of the Herald Sun put on 1000 copies or 0.2% and The Sunday Age which grew by 0.7%.
Despite being PANPA’s newspaper of the year, Sydney’s Morning Herald narrowly failed to avoid decline with a fall of just 364 copies for its weekday edition.
Newspaper Works today released its own analysis of newspaper numbers pointing out they are no worse than they were ten years ago.
Boss Tony Hales said: “Australians are still buying these printed broadsheets in virtually the same numbers as 10 years ago, which is remarkable in light of the changing media landscape and at a time when the doomsayers have been predicting the demise of newspapers thanks to the rise of the internet.”
However, it is worth noting that Australia’s population has grown by about 17% in the last decade.
Hales added: “Every week Australians are still buying 15.2 million metropolitan newspapers – this is a phenomenal number in a country with a population as relatively small as ours.”
Audit Bureau of Circulations – Newspaper circulation:
| Title | Publisher | Q4 2009 | Q4 2008 | % Change |
| AFR (Mon-Fri) | Fairfax Media | 77,470 | 86,158 | -10.08% |
| AFR (Sat) | Fairfax Media | 84,528 | 93,800 | -9.88% |
| SUN-HERALD | Fairfax Media | 442,357 | 473,469 | -6.57% |
| CANBERRA TIMES (Sat) | News Ltd | 55,000 | 58,735 | -6.36% |
| CANBERRA TIMES (Sun) | News Ltd | 33,000 | 34,855 | -5.32% |
| CANBERRA TIMES (M-F) | News Ltd | 33,000 | 34,629 | -4.70% |
| SUNDAY MAIL (QLD) | News Ltd | 525,477 | 551,271 | -4.68% |
| AUSTRALIAN (Mon-Fri) | News Ltd | 131,246 | 137,000 | -4.20% |
| NORTHERN TERRITORY NEWS (Mon-Fri) | News Ltd | 20,553 | 21,244 | -3.25% |
| SUNDAY TELEGRAPH | News Ltd | 632,009 | 653,000 | -3.21% |
| SUNDAY TERRITORIAN | News Ltd | 21,640 | 22,287 | -2.90% |
| WEST AUSTRALIAN (Sat) | West Australian Newspapers | 327,251 | 336,287 | -2.69% |
| DAILY TELE (Mon-Fri) | News Ltd | 359,171 | 369,000 | -2.66% |
| WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN | News Ltd | 300,941 | 309,000 | -2.61% |
| WEST AUSTRALIAN (Mon-Fri) | West Australian Newspapers | 188,211 | 192,964 | -2.46% |
| COURIER MAIL (Sat) | News Ltd | 288,924 | 296,054 | -2.41% |
| SUNDAY TIMES (WA) | News Ltd | 315,024 | 321,500 | -2.01% |
| AGE (Sat) | Fairfax Media | 291,000 | 296,750 | -1.94% |
| COURIER MAIL (Mon-Fri) | News Ltd | 211,230 | 215,383 | -1.93% |
| MERCURY (Mon-Fri) | News Ltd | 45,210 | 46,092 | -1.91% |
| SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Sat) | Fairfax Media | 353,878 | 360,200 | -1.76% |
| ADVERTISER (Sat) | News Ltd | 250,757 | 254,499 | -1.47% |
| NORTHERN TERRITORY NEWS (Sat) | News Ltd | 31,084 | 31,481 | -1.26% |
| SUNDAY MAIL (SA) | News Ltd | 300,483 | 304,096 | -1.19% |
| AGE (Mon-Fri) | Fairfax Media | 202,100 | 204,200 | -1.03% |
| SUNDAY TASMANIAN | News Ltd | 58,968 | 59,526 | -0.94% |
| SUNDAY HERALD-SUN | News Ltd | 601,000 | 606,500 | -0.91% |
| DAILY TELEGRAPH (Sat) | News Ltd | 322,456 | 325,000 | -0.78% |
| ADVERTISER (M-F) | News Ltd | 180,853 | 182,055 | -0.66% |
| HERALD-SUN (Mon-Fri) | News Ltd | 514,000 | 515,500 | -0.29% |
| MERCURY (Sat) | News Ltd | 61,123 | 61,254 | -0.21% |
| SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Mon-Fri) | Fairfax Media | 211,006 | 211,370 | -0.17% |
| HERALD-SUN (Sat) | News Ltd | 503,000 | 502,000 | +0.20% |
| SUNDAY AGE | Fairfax Media | 228,600 | 227,100 | +0.66% |
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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“blamed the falls on ‘a patchy economy, skittish consumer behaviour and rising interest rates’.”
They forgot “the internet”.
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Foobar – Totally agree… What about the web. How does this effect the decline?
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“blamed the falls on ‘a patchy economy, skittish consumer behaviour and rising interest rates’.”
Come on Newspaper Works! You should have included the “Internet” in that quote. You can’t possibly still be in denial?
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Not to surprising really… I have had SMH as my homepage on my browser for the last 5 years and cant remember the last time I bought a paper… :)))
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I don’t think this is as grim as it looks except for the AFR ( which coincidentally still charge for online content ), the period is over the Christmas/New year which are traditionally lower anyway.
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Just thought I’d point out that Canberra Times is a Fairfax/Rural Press publication, not News Ltd.
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In the case of the AFR I would imagine that a lot of businesses which might have had multiple copies delivered to their offices have reduced the number to maybe just a couple of copies and put them in the circulation files.
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You just have to wonder what the Roger the Shelf Stacker and his buddies on the fairfax board are thinking — if, indeed, they are capable of thought at all.
The AFR, which should have a lock on its market, continues its precipitous decline while simultaneously making a total botch of this-way-that-way “efforts” to establish a web presence. Yet management remains untouched, secure and very well paid while the newsroom is winnowed out, one round of layoffs and attrition after the next.
As for the The Age, why isn’t it gaining at the expense of the Herald Sun’s decline?
In Sydney and melbourne, the Shelf Stacker and his mates would rather cut costs to maintain margins than review and renew their product..
Fairfax needs to take its broadsheets either tab or berliner, refocus the editorial voice and roll the dice. It is certain death otherwise.
By the way, where does steve Harris stand in his efforts to ge t a board seat? Someone with a little ink under his nails would do the board a power of good.
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What’s an internet? We here in Western Australia don’t entertain these high falutin’ space age concepts until they are proven. ..the West Australian has been progressively improving their circulation since the board bloodbath just over a year ago and are still ramping up. And let’s talk elephants here, nothing is going to change much until they can figure out how to extort cash for news content in an effective and ongoing manner on that webby thing. The answer nobody wants to hear is that you need more effective advertising sales groups to support free news on the net. Trim your fat controllers and get some ad grunts down on the ground to get the job done. And pay them for it instead of supporting a top heavy management structure to stand around wringing their pudgy hands.
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Want to grow circulation? Try adding real value to your readers – seems to have worked for this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHuH8P_Vqc0
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@Ian I can’t understand a word of that guy.
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I drive to work because public transport on my route to work is simply awful. If public transport was good in my area / route for work I would buy a paper in the morning…
If Sydney had a real metro underground station, like London’s tube. Would more of us be purchasing newspapers?
Of course the internet is countering the need to buy a print newspaper. Does anyone have any stats per capita on public transport usage v car commuting?
I find Sydney and Australia in general so heavily reliant on the car…
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Doh – “station” – sh be: system…
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Inky: Never have so many opportunities been blown by so few.
Two years left for The Age. Tops.
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Reading the paper has become somewhat a luxury these days; finding an hour during the working day to sit down and physically read it from front to back is virtually impossible. Cue the internet.
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Dont you love how the ‘spin doctors’ try to manipulate the market to think it is the GEC that has caused these declines yet everyone that has commented has said its the internet?
What will they say when the confidence in the marketplace retruns yet there circ doesn’t?
Read an interesting blog the other day saying that newspapers are virtually in a death roll unless they act swiftly. Fairly valid points.
http://scorchmarketing.com.au/.....l-miss-you
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Yeah, yeah yeah. So show me how TV is performing. And what about online?
Boring.
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Don’t discount the fact that people may feel more than a little queezy buying 60 sheets of A3 only to read less than a quarter of the contents and throw it out. Then repeat that every day. I’d like the local paper to stop coming to my hose as I only really need 1 paper a month for the guinea pigs. More than that is a waste. A paper every day is a whole lot of paper. Regularly reading print news is the opposite of reduce, reuse, recycle and that is becoming less popular
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