ABCs: Education sales drop sees Fairfax digital subs down on last quarter as print slides again
For the first time since it introduced its paywall Fairfax Media has seen quarter on quarter declines in its digital subscriptions for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
The mastheads both saw declines in the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation figures with The Age shedding 6,306 digital subscriptions (down 4.87 per cent) while the Herald shed 1,572 (down 1.18 per cent).
The news comes as most of the uptake of most digital offerings continued to level off at around 5-10 per cent year on year, with the Herald Sun recovering from last quarter’s decline in digital subscriptions to post a 6.95 per cent quarterly rise, coinciding with the start of the AFL season.
Most of the loss in Fairfax’s digital subs appears to have come from the Fairfax’s highly discounted education offering, which allows schools to buy access to a year’s worth of digital replicas at a large discount.
Any danger Mumbrella could put a time and date prominently at the top of its stories? Obviously, no-one here has worked at a newspaper/website of record, where such information is mandatory.
Hi Tom,
Currently time and date is displayed at the bottom of every story.
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella
Herald Sun does not have a hyphen (and has not had one for around 20 years). Your copy is correct, but the graphic is relentlessly incorrect.
Hi BKG,
It seems to be an error carried forward from the official AMAA release table – apologies for that.
We’ll certainly note it to change for next time.
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella
So, in other words, all that aggressive discounting, advertising and promotional activity has done little to nothing for News’ various titles?
So earlier in the Week, we had News’ marketing chief in Australia, Damian Eales, waxing lyrical about how sales promotions and giveaways were doing wonders in terms of propping up print sales. https://mumbrella.com.au/news-corp-marketing-boss-sales-promotions-are-slowing-print-circulation-declines-292637
Not according to these numbers….
So sad to see Fairfax collapse. The papers are nothing like their former quality and are simply not worth reading. Now we face having perhaps only News Ltd papers to cover essential news. Fairfax has let us all down.
While I agree with “Sad” that the SMH certainly isn’t the paper it once was when I worked there (disclosure), it’s still streets ahead of the Murdoch propaganda sheets as a daily read.
@Liam – imagine what News Corp’s numbers would be if they took out unprofitable circ and weren’t playing such games?
Look at the actual digital numbers : News is only getting half the subscribers despite national coverage and higher tabloid print sales. And they practically give away subscriptions to schools.
The sad thing about Fairfax is that everything that has happened there over the past decade has contributed to lowering quality. Less and less journalists do not help. Then there are the deadlines are so silly that news that happens in an evening can not get into the paper that goes on sale the next morning. There was a time when late night news got into newspapers. Oh, that was before computers which speeded production up.