ABCs: Half yearly circulation audit sees many newspapers suffer 10% declines while Sunday Telegraph falls below 400,000
News Corp’s The Sunday Telegraph’s circulation fell below 400,000 for the first time, according to the inaugural half yearly figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation.
The data is the first time that the AMAA has consolidated six months worth of circulation numbers for newspapers, rather than the previous quarterly release. The percentage changes calculated by Mumbrella represent the changes from the quarterly numbers a year ago to the new six month numbers.
Compared to the same period last year the Sydney paper’s circulation fell 8.4% from 410,137 to 378,449. However the Sunday Telegraph’s fall was far from the greatest as other publications saw declines of over 10%.
The majority of weekend newspapers suffered declines with Sunday newspapers hard hit as Melbourne’s Sunday Herald Sun fell below the 350,000 mark to a circulation of 349,252, a 10.2% decrease from the same period last year.
Queensland’s Sunday Mail slipped below 300,000 for the first time, reporting a circulation of 289,888, down 10%.
Fairfax’s The Sun-Herald fell from 188,806 in the correspond period, to 164,652, and Sunday Age’s figures saw an 11.7% decline in dropping under 120,000 for the first time, sitting at 115,056 .
Western Australia’s Sunday Times showed the smallest decline, down 0.36% year on year to 183,828.
The data is the first time the AMAA has consolidated six months worth of circulation numbers for newspapers, rather than the previous quarterly release. The percentage changes calculated by Mumbrella represent the changes from the quarterly numbers a year ago to the new six month numbers.
Saturday’s newspapers also witnessed declines, with Herald Sun’s circulation just above 300,000 – at 306,371 compared to a circulation of 335,232 in the corresponding period, down 9.3%.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Saturday edition fell 11% from 186,918 in the March to June 2016 period, to 168,470.
While Daily Telegraph maintained second place on the among the Saturday editions, it reported a circulation of 221,996, down from 233,546, at the same time last year.
According to the latest results, Australia’s national newspapers continued to slip, with Fairfax’s The Australian Financial Review falling below 45,000 for the first time. The business newspaper saw an 11.8% drop, from 49,900 this time last year to 44,635.
News Corp’s The Australian slipped slightly, reporting a circulation of 94,448 compared to 99,027 at the same time the previous year.
While at the end of last year, the weekend nationals saw growth, they fell year on year.
The Weekend Australian fell below 220,000, with January to June figures reporting a circulation of 219,242.
Fairfax’s weekend edition of the Australian Financial Review dropped below 50,000 for the first time, marking an 8.9% decline from the previous year.
Amongst the metro newspapers, the biggest decline came from News Corp’s Northern Territory News, down 14.1% year on year to 11,279.
The Canberra Times also saw a major drop, down 12.7% to 15,298 for the January to June results.
Herald Sun remained the top selling Monday to Friday publication, however its circulation was down to 303,140, a 9.1% loss from last year’s 330,766.
News Corp’s Daily Telegraph fell below 230,000 for the first time – to 221,641 and Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald fell below 90,000, to 88,634 – an 11.1% decline. Circulation figures from the corresponding period was 239,018 and 98,472 respectively.
It was a more positive result across digital subscriptions, with The Australian climbing to 85,349 subscribers and The Herald Sun also reporting growth, up to 77,213 subscribers.
Fairfax Media’s figures are no longer audited, however unaudited figures of paying digital subscribers revealed 21% year on year growth, with 236,000 subscribers across the three papers (Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Australian Financial Review.)
A spokesperson for Fairfax Media told Mumbrella paid circulation metrics weren’t “alone reflective” of the metro publishing business or the effectiveness of connections between audiences and advertisers.
“Fairfax is achieving digital subscriber growth, growing revenue, and doing so profitably, by various means that are not reflected in the traditional metrics,” the spokesperson said.
“We look at total masthead readership – capturing both print and digital via EMMA metrics – which for May 2017 show The Sydney Morning Herald is Australia’s number one masthead reaching 5.1 million; The Age has strength in Victoria with an audience of 3 million; and Australia’s premier financial title The Australian Financial Review reaches around 2 million.
“Fairfax’s quality journalism and content drives our extensive print and digital network, reaching around 13 million Australians a month,” the spokesperson added.
“Print circulation changes are the expected outcome of our focus on profitable publishing and consumers’ continuing take-up of digital.”
Mumbrella has approached News Corp for comment.
The nationals might be the first to die at this rate. Their print runs in some states cannot be economic and the distribution costs appalling. News probably has the advantage over fairfax in that its metro titles in Capital cities except Perth might subsidise the Oz costs. But it would a close run thing.
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Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse for newspapers……those are enormous YoY drops (and come after many previous years of decline). At this rate, hard to see how most of them will be around in five years’ time.
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That all might be true in time and the tipping point might be 1-20 years but if you had to sell car tyres and canned soup tomorrow and you think you’re clever with a programmatic buy that serves ads on dating sites as a cheap proxy because your target visited taste.com.au once, you don’t deserve your pay this week.
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Ah Newspapers, now the only medium that gets judged on how many copies they sell, along with eyeballs.
Drop the circulation measurement and put them on an even playing field with every other medium out there who trade on an audience, or my favorite term “opportunity to see”.
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@Anon — even on that basis (audience/readership as opposed to sales), newspapers aren’t in great shape vs other media, most notably TV. For print, readership numbers are also falling and have been for years. For digital versions of the newspapers -=- yes much higher numbers in absolute terms, but incredibly low engagement. The majority of visitors to digital news sites, spend literally a few minutes per session, or less than an hour a month on those sites. (not just here in Australia. This is a global phenomenon)
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@Anon – no other media requires you to buy a copy prior to reading the ads. You don’t need to buy a TV each time you watch a new show. The number of copies they sell is a very relevant consideration.
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@ChrisWalton – it is indeed a very relevant consideration, but I think to take up Anon’s point, it means your not comparing apples with oranges. There has to be some weighting given to the fact that an advertisement seen in a paper has been served to a pair of eyeballs that was willing to shill out a few of their hard earned and pay for it.
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Pssst. That’s actually called “Likelihood To See” (LTS).
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When I do see a newspaper, usually waiting for a meeting, there don’t seem to be any ads in them at all these days.
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Few other things at play here
Yield per sale for instance
If you look at Fairfax or News circulation revenue it’s actually been going up for a couple of years now as they keep stress testing the high water mark of what their readers will tolerate. How much was the saturday SMH 3-4 years ago? I think only $1.20. Today , if memory serves $3.50. Ouch. So the powers that be are trading circ off for yield and probably attempting to hold ad rates. TV has pulled off this trick in stunning fashion . Their viewers drop each year but the price of ads always goes up. So I guess you can’t blame the newspaper people for giving this strategy a whirl. So how much drop is due to price increase vs newspaper readers leaving in droves for digital as is often the commentary. No idea. But I do love that TV gets off Scott free on losing viewers but newspapers are tagged as the big losers. Not sure why.
One other point.
The Fairfax person in this article is quoted as starting to sound a lot like those magazine numpties who think going dark on sales figures is a good thing, only improved by the complete pilava line that a printed masthead readership can some how be mashed with its digital engagement to come up with a much bigger figure. No one – clients, media buyers, my pet silkie chickens are that dumb. The magazine bosses have damaged their medium beyond what anyone could have imagined by trying to run this line along with obscuring sales and using often dodgy measurements of readership.print engagement is not digital engagement. You can’t mix them by saying it’s the same brand. But magazine people were always a bit cowboy like. If the newspaper bosses choose to follow them in these two strategies then that will likely mark the actual start to the final countdown on the medium Because if management resorts to these sort of stupid and desperate tactics there is truly no hope for newspapers.
The article has overstated the declines because the % calculation is wrong. For example, The Sunday Age has declined 13,422 copies (from 128,478 in 2016 to 115,056 in 2017) which is a 10.45% decline and not 11.70% decline as stated.
Still not a pretty picture for the industry though.
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I picked up on that too Andrew (they’ve actually quoted how much more last year’s was compared to this year’s and called it something else). For a long time I’ve taken little notice of journalists using percentages or trying their hands at any arithmetical. They need to know how to write in a way we understand. Leave the other stuff to people with those skills.
As a little teaser, if circulation keep falling by 10% YOY they’ll never get to zero
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