Roy Morgan: Mag readership up 3% yoy

The Financial Review is the only major newspaper to record an increase in year-on-year readership having risen more than 4%, according to Roy Morgan’s latest survey.

In Monday to Friday the national paper’s readership has risen 4.4% and another 2.1% for its weekend edition.

The results outstrip The Australian which suffered an 11.7% decline in Monday to Friday with a 1.9% drop for The Weekend Australian.

Both national mastheads increased their digital audience.

Readers of the Australian.com.au have risen from 793,000 to 955,000 while the afr.com’s audience has risen from 193,000 to 297,000.

Turning to the major state-based papers, in New South Wales Fairfax was dealt the hardest hand with the Sydney Morning Herald dropping 13.4% in its weekly readership with a 15.5% drop for the Sun-Herald.

News Limited suffered declines as well but much lighter, losing 7.3% for the Sunday Telegraph, 6.4% for the Daily Telegraph on Saturday and 4.5% during the week.

However, Fairfax’s online audience has increased.

The number of total smh.com.au readers has increased year-on-year from 2.269 million to 2.274 million. Readers of thetelegraph.com.au have dropped slightly from 991,000 to 948,000.

In Victoria the trend continued, with The Age slumping 11.1% compared to 5.3% for the Herald Sun during the week.

Readers of the heraldsun.com.au fell from a total 1.335 million to 1.205 million while theage.com.au grew from 1.632 million to 1.757 million.

New data from The Newspaper Works' metric EMMA are due next week. For the latest EMMA results click here.

Looking at the glossies now, there are some notable lows – men’s category was dealt a 19.7% drop – but also some highs with food and entertainment up 17.7%.

Other highs include the business, financial and attire category which is up 11.3% and music and movies up 10.1% (driven by the growth of Empire up 34.1%).

Overall there was good news for the mags with total magazine readership up 3.1%.

In the women’s category Women’s Weekly was the biggest loser shedding 14.5% with New Idea the biggest riser, up 9.9%.

Women’s lifestyle was plagued by negatives where Cleo shed 29.9%. Of all the women’s categories there were only three risers, joining New Idea was Woman’s Day (6.3%) and Frankie (9.4%).

Donna Hay and Recipes+ were the stars of the upwardly trending food and entertainment category, rising 9.6% and 7.1% respectively.

Among the men’s mags GQ was the biggest riser, growing a huge 57.8%. Men’s Fitness was up 17.1% with Men’s Health up 15.4%. The dubious title of biggest loser was a tight competition between Picture and Men’s Style, down 34% and 35.5% respectively.

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