ABCs: AFR loses 7% of weekend sales as News Ltd and Fairfax brawl over Sydney figures
Sales of the Australian Financial Review’s weekend edition have taken a dramatic turn for the worse, today’s set of ABC numbers suggest.
According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, in July to September, the weekend AFR’s sales have fallen from 78,433 in 2009 to 72,898 this year – down 7.1%.
The drop is particularly drastic compared to the previous quarter when the Fairfax Media paper fell just 1%.
Meanwhile the worst performing metro or national paper was News Ltd’s Sunday Times in WA which saw a fall of 7.4%.
Across the board, it was a brutal picture for newspapers with all but two recording a decline in circulation.
The only papers to buck the trend were owned by News Ltd. The Australian was up by 1.6%, while The Saturday edition of The Daily Telegraph in Sydney was up 1.9%.
Meanwhile, News Ltd says the Saturday edition of The Daily Telegraph now outsells the Sydney Morning Herald (which was down 4.7% for its Saturday edition) in active sales.
News Ltd issued a press release saying: “Sales (excluding bundled, event, education, accommodation and airlines distribution) have also overtaken The Sydney Morning Herald for the very first time.”
However, Fairfax hit back with SMH publisher Lloyd Whish-Wilson saying: “It’s the most creative thing to come out of the Telegraph in years. It is a completely illegitimate claim. If you use their logic they should wipe 37,481 off the sale of The Sunday Telegraph, which has more sales in these categories than the SMH.”
“The Audit Bureau of Circulations, which incidentally is chaired by News Ltd’s own Dr Stephen Hollings, recognises these categories as legitimate sales as do advertising agencies and clients which make up a very important part of the audit bureau membership.”
However, the number still indicate that the gap between The Daily Telegraph in Sydney and Saturday SMH is now the closest it has ever been.
Source: News Ltd
Even industry body Newspaper Works, which generally remains relentlessly upbeat about circulation figures conceded that numbers had fallen for the industry as a whole.
CEO Tony Hale said: “While the media landscape continues to change in the digital age, consumers are still buying printed newspapers in very substantial numbers relative to the size of our population.
“Against this backdrop, the past year has seen a huge commitment from newspaper companies to meet the changing needs of consumers. This year alone we’ve seen the sort of product development never dreamt of even a decade ago as publishers step up to the challenges – and great opportunities – presented by this new media era.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large. He returned to Mumbrella as Publisher in January 2025
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Not surprised the weekend SMH is slipping. The editorial quality has declined markedly in the last couple of months. Story choice and relevance, front page composition, writing style all have eroded. I often marvel at the choice of stories on the front page, or the desperate lack of any real hard hitting political pieces. If it weren’t for Lenore Taylor, I wouldn’t even pick up News Review these days. Maybe it’s time to make the switch to the Weekend Australian – appears others already have.
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Wow, Yet another graph with another downward slope pointing to the eventual extinction of print media. It will be a long slow death but a death none the less.
It’s almost like the world is changing and people have slowly stopped buying print media or something…. Wonder where they get their news now ?
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Toothless SMH editorial and advertising wraps ad nauseam have seriously diminished the reader experience. Wafer thin Good Weekend surely can’t be value for advertisers these days either. The Weekend Aus is a much more enjoyable read these days
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The Canberra Times only reaches 32,000 during the week? Surely it would be cheaper to send the journos out and about to read out their stories to subscribers?
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As an example of how Fairfax standards have slipped, consider Shaun Carney’s column in Saturday’s edition of The Age:
#1 — “Squabbling over the order on how-to-vote cards in this seat or that in a single election is finger-in-the-dyke stuff.”
Unless it is a sly pitch to the sapphic community, the word for what keeps the Dutch nice and dry should be “dike”.
#2 — “The outcome could easily rest on how a small handful of seats turn out.”
Should be “turns”. Handful is singular and takes a singular verb.
#3 — “Every poll and each subsequent election shows”
Should be “show”. See #2
#4 — “A battle for primacy ”
Tautology. What else would you battle for?
#5 — “the Greens’ build-up of support”
Should be “the build-up of Greens support”. Greens aren’t building up anything. It is the growing support that is building the Greens.
No point in listing any more of the scores of other mistakes evident in today’s edition, but it is worth noting what used to be standard newsroom wisdom:
Bad subbing means bad editting — and a newspaper is only as good as its editor.
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What are the figures for the major regional dailies, Sunshine Coast Daily, Gold Coast Bulletin, Newcastle Herald, Illawarra Mercury, Geelong Advertiser and the Launceston Examiner?
Would be appreciated if you have the figures.
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@Che B. You refer to yourself as a “guru”, yet you work at Reach Local… Please?!
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