ABCs: Newspapers continue print declines with mixed results on digital subscriptions
Sales of Fairfax’s weekday print titles The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald have fallen by 25,000 and 21,000 editions respectively in the year since the publisher switched from broadsheet to ‘compact’ size last March, with mixed results in digital subscriptions as growth in the take up of paywalls appeared to slow.
Melbourne title The Age showed a significant slowing in its growth of digital sales quarter on quarter, with just 139 new subscriptions added in the most recent circulation survey, while the start of the AFL season helped its News Corp city rival the Herald Sun post a 20 per cent jump in the same period.
Overall The Age weekday print circulation fell from 144,277 copies last year to 118,426 this year, down 17.9 per cent, while sister publication The Sydney Morning Herald reported its weekday circulation was 126,510, down from 148,037 or 14.5 per cent.
The SMH’s digital subscriptions fared better than its sister publication reporting a growth in its weekday of 6,457 subscribers a growth of 5.37 per cent quarter on quarter.
These are extremely bad indicators. Unless they change, which appears unlikely, none of the Fairfax major titles and none of the News Ltd titles is commercially viable. Even the AFR appears to be terminal – in fact on these numbers it is already a goner.
Fairfax in a world of pain – the decline in print circ is accelerating , and growth in digital subs is slowing, albeit after a very good start. The small growth in digital subs – virtually non-existent for the Age – is despite massive discounting for new subs. Churn must be high. And as for the AFR – it surely can no longer be profitable….
News Corp not doing much better – although numbers for the Aus are relatively good. What is driving the big increase in digital subs? And while the Herald sun has recorded a big % increase in digital subs (driven by AFL season) their numbers are still less than half those of the Age…..
Revenue per user (both ad revenue and subscription revenue) for digital is a fraction of print. Clearly digital is not going to save these businesses.
Both these publishers need to start finding significant new revenue streams – quickly.
The reason digital subs are going so badly is they cost far too much and are far too restricted in distribution – The Age, Im looking at you!
When you take away the cost of printing and physical distribution, a digital edition should not be costing $1 per paper.
The Age needs to get of its high horse and allow it to be sold through the likes of Press Reader within Australia also!
“We are also encouraged that the Herald Sun now has 47,815 digital subscriptions, which represents growth of over 80 per cent compared to the same period last year.”
“Meanwhile the Herald Sun posted very strong growth results on its digital subscriptions of up 24.6 per cent or 48,830 users going into the AFL season.”
????
wat
The biggest loser of these numbers will be the digital product – digital product has become more diverse and generally stronger as its propped up by a legacy print business which covers the majority of photographers, journalists and contributors. Without these print contributions a significant amount of what makes these businesses strong online will not exist anymore.
Canberra Times also gets inflated online traffic from Fairfax readers dodging the “paywall”.
Bloody horrible year for them, despite the monopoly. Time to shake things up drastically.
Based on these numbers the SMH digital numbers have gone backwards.
Article says this quarter for weekday sales were 120043, but the quarter before sales were 126500.
But then it’s reported as an increase when it appears to be a decrease
Also why are print numbers reported YOY but digital QOQ?
These numbers are awful, but they tell only part of the story. The really substantial financial impact is advertising, which had been moving away and which now appears to be largely gone from print. The collapse of engagement is greater than the circulation losses because publishers have been manufacturing print and digital sales in a desperate attempt to aggregate a commercial audience. The trouble is the aggregators (Google etc) already have huge numbers and they have lots of useful segmentation data.
The tragic problem is that newspaper managements have never thought that a good product might be the answer. In fact all of them are ignoring product quality. this is most stark at the high end niches, like AFR, which has sunk into mediocrity and has seen its audience and engagement evaporate.
Bosses at Fairfax and News seem to be overtly focused on a failed strategy, which is traffic based. Until they take up a product strategy (unlikely at this point) you have to assume that the prevalence of naked buskers and celebrity sex romps will continue until click bait chokes them to death.
(Time adjusted so comment appears in order)
Hi Shamma and Warren,
Shamma – We noted the year on year for SMH digital up a 180%+ but given Fairfax put the paywall up in June we do feel that is not reflective of the true situation. In a couple of quarters we’ll be reporting that in full too but at the moment we’ve just noted fall in growth in digital.
Hopefully we’ll have a more complete picture later this year.
Warren – The SMI data was out yesterday and it shows the bleak bleak picture of ad revenue you discuss. https://mumbrella.com.au/smi-april-ad-spend-falls-9-2-per-cent-newspaper-revenue-falls-18-per-cent-227262
Cheers
Nic – Mumbrella
The Australian and the Daily Tele don’t even make the top 10 most visited Aussie news sites. They won’t release the digital subs for the Daily Tele. Clearly not going well despite massive investment in advertising and marketing over the last year or so. There are Daily Tele digital sub ads everywhere, and their papers are filled every day with offers and enticements to get people to sign up. Yet Fairfax seems to be getting good digital numbers without even trying
fair enough Nic – makes sense.