Australia’s metro and national newspapers have had the worst circulation result in their history, with every paper in the country except for two in decline.
Newspaper Works – the marketing body for the industry – claimed the Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers were “firm”, and blamed the falls on “a patchy economy, skittish consumer behaviour and rising interest rates”.
Fairfax Media’s The Australian Financial Review was worst hit in the last three months with a fall of around 10% for both its Monday to Friday and Saturday editions compared to a year ago. The rate of decline for the AFR increased compared to its 9.7% fall in figures released three months ago.
Its daily national rival The Australian, owned by News Ltd, was down 4% on weekdays and 2.6% for its Saturday edition.
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Meanwhile, Fairfax also has the hardest hit metro paper, with the Sun-Herald in Sydney declining by 6.6% to 442,357. Its News Ltd rival the Sunday Telegraph was down 3.2% to 632,009 copies.
The worst performing daily metro was the Canberra Times, which was down 4.7%.
The only papers to stray into positive territory were in Melbourne, where the Saturday edition of the Herald Sun put on 1000 copies or 0.2% and The Sunday Age which grew by 0.7%.
Despite being PANPA’s newspaper of the year, Sydney’s Morning Herald narrowly failed to avoid decline with a fall of just 364 copies for its weekday edition.
Newspaper Works today released its own analysis of newspaper numbers pointing out they are no worse than they were ten years ago.
Boss Tony Hales said: “Australians are still buying these printed broadsheets in virtually the same numbers as 10 years ago, which is remarkable in light of the changing media landscape and at a time when the doomsayers have been predicting the demise of newspapers thanks to the rise of the internet.”
However, it is worth noting that Australia’s population has grown by about 17% in the last decade.
Hales added: “Every week Australians are still buying 15.2 million metropolitan newspapers – this is a phenomenal number in a country with a population as relatively small as ours.”
Audit Bureau of Circulations – Newspaper circulation:
Title |
Publisher |
Q4 2009 |
Q4 2008 |
% Change
|
AFR (Mon-Fri) |
Fairfax Media |
77,470 |
86,158 |
-10.08% |
AFR (Sat) |
Fairfax Media |
84,528 |
93,800 |
-9.88% |
SUN-HERALD |
Fairfax Media |
442,357 |
473,469 |
-6.57% |
CANBERRA TIMES (Sat) |
News Ltd |
55,000 |
58,735 |
-6.36% |
CANBERRA TIMES (Sun) |
News Ltd |
33,000 |
34,855 |
-5.32% |
CANBERRA TIMES (M-F) |
News Ltd |
33,000 |
34,629 |
-4.70% |
SUNDAY MAIL (QLD) |
News Ltd |
525,477 |
551,271 |
-4.68% |
AUSTRALIAN (Mon-Fri) |
News Ltd |
131,246 |
137,000 |
-4.20% |
NORTHERN TERRITORY NEWS (Mon-Fri) |
News Ltd |
20,553 |
21,244 |
-3.25% |
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH |
News Ltd |
632,009 |
653,000 |
-3.21% |
SUNDAY TERRITORIAN |
News Ltd |
21,640 |
22,287 |
-2.90% |
WEST AUSTRALIAN (Sat) |
West Australian Newspapers |
327,251 |
336,287 |
-2.69% |
DAILY TELE (Mon-Fri) |
News Ltd |
359,171 |
369,000 |
-2.66% |
WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN |
News Ltd |
300,941 |
309,000 |
-2.61% |
WEST AUSTRALIAN (Mon-Fri) |
West Australian Newspapers |
188,211 |
192,964 |
-2.46% |
COURIER MAIL (Sat) |
News Ltd |
288,924 |
296,054 |
-2.41% |
SUNDAY TIMES (WA) |
News Ltd |
315,024 |
321,500 |
-2.01% |
AGE (Sat) |
Fairfax Media |
291,000 |
296,750 |
-1.94% |
COURIER MAIL (Mon-Fri) |
News Ltd |
211,230 |
215,383 |
-1.93% |
MERCURY (Mon-Fri) |
News Ltd |
45,210 |
46,092 |
-1.91% |
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Sat) |
Fairfax Media |
353,878 |
360,200 |
-1.76% |
ADVERTISER (Sat) |
News Ltd |
250,757 |
254,499 |
-1.47% |
NORTHERN TERRITORY NEWS (Sat) |
News Ltd |
31,084 |
31,481 |
-1.26% |
SUNDAY MAIL (SA) |
News Ltd |
300,483 |
304,096 |
-1.19% |
AGE (Mon-Fri) |
Fairfax Media |
202,100 |
204,200 |
-1.03% |
SUNDAY TASMANIAN |
News Ltd |
58,968 |
59,526 |
-0.94% |
SUNDAY HERALD-SUN |
News Ltd |
601,000 |
606,500 |
-0.91% |
DAILY TELEGRAPH (Sat) |
News Ltd |
322,456 |
325,000 |
-0.78% |
ADVERTISER (M-F) |
News Ltd |
180,853 |
182,055 |
-0.66% |
HERALD-SUN (Mon-Fri) |
News Ltd |
514,000 |
515,500 |
-0.29% |
MERCURY (Sat) |
News Ltd |
61,123 |
61,254 |
-0.21% |
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Mon-Fri) |
Fairfax Media |
211,006 |
211,370 |
-0.17% |
HERALD-SUN (Sat) |
News Ltd |
503,000 |
502,000 |
+0.20% |
SUNDAY AGE |
Fairfax Media |
228,600 |
227,100 |
+0.66% |