Business titles lead the pack in readership

Tim Burrowes

November 12, 2009 5:00

Business magazines, led by The Monthly, enjoyed the biggest increase in readership in the 12 months to September, while parenting titles suffered the biggest fall as a category.

The Monthly saw a 32.2 per cent year on year (YOY) rise to 119,000, while Time magazine similarly rose 16.2 per cent to 302,000, according to the latest Roy Morgan Readership results.

While readership for the other business titles fell, the overall category saw a 6.1 per cent rise.

The women’s weeklies suffered a 10.4 per cent fall, with ACP Magazines’ NW seeing the biggest drop, down 32 per cent YOY to 341,000. This was closely followed by Pacific Magazines’ Who which was down 22.7 per cent to 619,000, and New Idea which fell 18 per cent to 1,615,000.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.

Topics

ACP Magazines GQ magazines Media News magazines Pacific Magazines The Monthly

3 COMMENTS

Gavin Costello 12 Nov 09

Sorry to be pedantic, but is the monthly considered a ‘Business’ magazine. As a subscriber, I’m a bit confused by that definition.

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mumbrella 12 Nov 09

Hi Gavin,

That’s a fair question. In this case, Roy Morgan lists it within the business category.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

Anonymous 13 Nov 09

There may not be a Roy Morgan category that is a perfect container for a magazine of intellect and ideas like the Monthly, but ‘Business’ is still clearly the best match.
It is easy to recognise that the Monthly’s content is business-oriented. In the current issue, no senior business leader in Australian would want to miss out on reading the cover story on James Murdoch plus the regular business and politics cross-over pieces, not to mention the high profile essays on The Global Financial Crisis by the PM and the responses from senior economists.
However people choose to categorise the Monthly, they can’t ignore its attraction to highly educated readers, as evidenced by the extraordinary growth – being the fastest growing magazine in this category since launching in 2005.
John Derry – The Monthly