It’s that time again when newspapers and magazines get a hard dose of truth and find out where the chips have fallen, with the latest quarterly stats fresh from the (digital) printers.
In magazines, it’s the celeb titles taking a thrashing, while newspapers are still posting losses, however more modest than that of the mags.
“Consumers choose to interact with our leading brands across magazines, digital, social media and live experiences and we continue to invest to ensure we are engaging with them on the channels they prefer,” Bauer Media Group, Interim CEO Andreas Schoo, said.
“As a multi-platform business this data reliably shows the continued strength of our brands in reaching consumers on the channels of their choice.”
Effectively this translates to the stocktake of all readership across print and digital, which leaves most publications in OK standings. Print alone is a somewhat different story.
Magazines
Bauer Media’s Woman’s Day is leading the pack despite a decent drop of around 11.6 per cent. It’s circulation as a result also plummeted, falling from 307, 126 between January and March 2015 to 271,517 in the same period for 2016. The silver medal for mags goes to Pacific Magazine’s New Idea, which fell 14 per cent to 230,062.
Both publications slipped in the digital realm, with subscriptions falling 8.2 per cent and 35.4 per cent, respectively.
Third place was awarded to another Pac Mags baby, That’s Life, which fell by over 10 per cent to sell 165,190 copies.
TV Week and Take 5 at Bauer both experienced drops of 10 per cent each, but still rake in quite large print sales figures of 125,512 and 148,014 respectively.
Bauer’s OK! Magazine was likely to biggest plummet in print, sinking by almost 28 per cent and selling just 51,012 copies in the last quarter.
Unlike newspapers, nearly all cross-platform Magazines are still read by more Australians in print than in their digital forms. Only three titles have more people reading online than in print: Vogue (406,000 digital and 315,000 print readers, with a total audience of 705,000); Gourmet Traveller (238,000 digital, 225,000 print, for 449,000 overall); and The Monthly (161,000 digital and 154,000 print, for 282,000 total).
Peter Zavecz, CEO, Pacific Magazines, said, “Our business model is positioned for future growth, with an impressive multi-platform footprint, major new online plays, partnerships with some of the world’s best media players and growing new revenue streams.”
Gereurd Roberts, commercial director, Pacific Magazines, added, “Our strategic mission is to own every single content genre we operate in and, in doing so, build the country’s deepest and most valuable data sets”.
Newspapers
Fairfax Media’s The Australian Financial Review might have dropped by 10.5 per cent in print sales for weekday editions, but the weekend edition only dipped by a mere 0.7 per cent to maintain sales of 62,345, higher than its weekday sales.
But this didn’t hide the fact that when it comes to circulation, The Oz now has double the circulation of the Fin in Monday to Friday sales, hovering above the 100,000 copies per day.
The AFR’s weekend edition, however, miraculously pulled a win out of nowhere, actually growing by 0.7 per cent in the last quarter.
News Corp’s The Australian sunk by a humble 2.1 per cent to 101,980 print sales, while the Daily Telegraph pulled the highest weekday paper figures of 241,372, despite a 5.3 per cent plummet. The Sunday Telegraph raked in even higher weekend sales of 434,045, down by seven per cent.
The Sydney Morning Herald fell by around eight per cent compared to last year, still holding a figure of 102,512, while it’s Saturday edition sold 191,728 and the Sun Herald flogging 196,060 copies.
