ABCs: Fairfax Media’s weekly titles continue to decline as The Australian grows digital subscribers
Fairfax Media’s The Sydney Morning Herald has seen its Monday to Friday print circulation slip further away from the 100,000 figure while News Corp rival The Daily Telegraph remains well above the 200,000 mark.
According to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation, the SMH saw its circulation decline year-on-year by 8.7% from shifting an average of 104,833 copies each weekday July to September period of last year to just 95,733 copies in the same time this year.
The newspaper saw its weekly circulation fall below 100,000 in the March to June period when it dropped to 98,472.
Fairfax Media’s The Age saw its weekday circulation drop below 90,000 for the first time after a decline of 9.3%.
The newspaper dropped from 97,014 in July-September 2015 to 87,979.
The declines for Fairfax Media’s mastheads come as their weekly future in print hangs in the balance with the publishing company stating that it is “inevitable” that the Monday to Friday editions of The SMH and The Age will be axed.
While speculation suggested the publisher would move ahead with the drastic decision before the year is out, no move has been made yet suggesting a timeline won’t be put in place for phasing out the weekly print products until next year.
Meanwhile, News Corp’s Sydney metro The Daily Telegraph also saw its Monday to Friday circulation slide, down 7.1% year-on-year from 251,710 to 233,857.
Its Melbourne masthead the Herald Sun saw its circulation slide by 5.3% from 333,235 to 317,517.
Amongst the national newspapers, The Australian saw its weekly circulation slide by 3.6% from 101,040 last year to 97,419 this year.
However it still boasts more than twice the circulation of Fairfax Media’s Australian Financial Review which saw its circulation slide by 9.2% from 52,892 to 48,009.
The Weekend Australian posted a circulation of 220,945, down 1.2% from last year’s circulation of 223,526 while the weekend edition of The Australian Financial Review saw its circulation slip below 50,000 for the first time after a drop of 9.8%.
It was more positive news for The Australian’s digital subscriptions which were up 10.4% year-on-year and 2.2% on the March to June quarter.
The national broadsheet reported 80,722 digital subscribers for the quarter, up from 73,118 compared to the July to September period in 2015 and up from the 79,018 it reported during March to June this year.
It was similar figures for subscribers to the Weekend Australian, up from 73,204 last year to 80,845.
News Corp’s Herald Sun also saw its digital subscriptions grow, up 18% year-on-year from 63,615 last year to 75,067. Compared to the March to June quarter it was an increase of 2.2%, up from 73,470.
The West Australian reported it had 16,528 digital subscriptions, up from 14,664 in the March to June period and compared to July to September last year, it was up from 7,959.
Fairfax Media no longer report digital subscriber figures.
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Why does this analysis never factor in the bundled (almost free) newspaper copies that are included in the overall sales figures? They’re publicly available. 19.6% of The Australian’s audited figure is (virtual) giveaways to hotels, airports etc while the Daily Telegraph sits at 11.6%.
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Well I used to buy at least two papers a day. Now I’ve even given up on the fin review. Fairfax has completely lost its purpose and is run purely for its execs. A total disgrace.
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While I agree with your sentiment, Lost Cause, I disagree with your statement. Fairfax is a total disgrace bur it isn’t run purely for its execs – they simply avoiding the inevitable showdown with the various unions that control the papers.
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I used to read SMH online (stopped buying print years ago). The issues over the least few years online is that the usability of SMH (all the Fairfax news offerings online) has taken a very bad turn for the worse.
If I wanted to watch a video I would have gone to YouTube. For some reason, on pretty much every article that is featured on SMH, there is an accompanying video? It slows down the site and has no value to me (I want to read the news…) The Guardian rocks. The ABC app is v useful too. SBS isnt too bad. I can quite frankly live without Fairfax.
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I used to buy the smh every day, but it’s just 100% left wing now. I kept buying on Mondays for the TV guide, but they even kept pushing their left wing views in TV program reviews! I’ve given up, I’m not buying it at all anymore.
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Although Domain (from Fairfax) is unreal and smacks the absolute cr@p out of REA. Seriously Fairfax: look at the success of Domain and apply it to your news offering!? The usability of Domain is 2nd to none. You could scale that overseas and then you might survive, in fact you could grow bigger than ever before… (The suits and red tape will probably never allow it to happen…) – Is there a computer scientist on the board at Fairfax yet…..?
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Perhaps if Fairfax’s printed version was a tad more exciting and their websites concentrated on printing news about the cities they are based in rather than re-hashing news from all over the planet, Fairfax could retain it’s readers. As for their hugely annoying ‘opt-out’ videos which is usually just some hack repeating the body of a story, what a huge turn off. No other paper in the world does it but Fairfax stubbornly sticks to a failed concept.
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Do you have the data for WA on Sundays? Or have I missed it?
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