The golden Age and the setting Sun: Roy Morgan Newspaper Readership and Cross-Platform Audience Results for September 2014

Roy Morgan Research today releases the latest Print Readership and Cross-Platform Audience results for Australian Newspapers for the year to September 2014.

Digital audiences continue to rise, however fewer Australians are reading major daily newspapers in print format, with weekend readership hardest hit. In an average week in the 12 months to September 2014, newspapers reached 9,419,000 Australians overall, down 6.0% in a year. Readership on Saturdays and Sundays each dropped by 467,000—equal to a 7.8% decline on Saturday and 8.4% on Sunday.  

Nationally, only The Age in Victoria managed the supreme feat of increasing (or at least maintaining) print readership across all three editions: average Monday to Friday readership rose 4.8% to 547,000; Saturday was steady at 700,000; and Sunday rose 6.7% to 591,000 readers.

Three other papers also made weekday gains: the Townville Bulletin (up 9.8%), Canberra Times (up 5.4%) and Newcastle Herald (up 3.0%). The Courier-Mail, also, can surely count its unchanged weekday figure (and only single-digit weekend declines) as a win.

Although its print readership fell, The Age’s Fairfax stable-mate the Sydney Morning Herald fared better than average overall, down 5.5% on weekdays and 4.3% on Saturday, although the Sun-Herald shed 10.0%.

The Financial Review dropped 14.2% Monday to Friday but only 2.7% for its weekend edition. Conversely, The Australian’s 8.0% weekday loss is a better than the 15.3% decline for the weekend edition.

But there was nothing inconsistent about the results for News Corp dailies the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph and Adelaide Advertiser, which each suffered double-digit proportional losses across all their weekday, Saturday and Sunday editions.

Cross-Platform Audiences

But print, of course, is only part of the newspaper audience story. The number of people accessing each masthead by website or app not only grew or remained steady, and digital online readers comprise an increasing proportion of newspaper audiences.

Already the leader in total cross-platform audience, the Sydney Morning Herald extended its lead, with 444,000 more digital viewers dwarfing the print losses and giving the masthead a 9.7% increase overall.

The Adelaide Advertiser had the largest proportional surge in digital viewers, up 26.5% to 491,000—enough to increase the paper’s total audience increase by 3.7% despite the dramatic decline in print readership. The Courier-Mail also posted solid digital gains to finish 3.4% up overall. 

The Age’s print readership actually grew by more than its digital audience, resulting in a 2.7% cross-platform gain.

But increasing digital audience numbers for the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, Financial Review, Mercury, the West Australian and The Australian were offset by their respective declines in print.   

Cross-Platform Audiences for Newspapers

Print is average issue readership; digital is website visitation and app usage in an average 7 days.

Click here to see all the results for
Newspaper Print Readership or Total Newspaper Cross-Platform Audiences
for the 12 months to September 2014.

Tim Martin, General Manager - Media, Roy Morgan Research, says:

“Audiences continue to migrate from the traditional print format to the myriad online platforms for consuming their major daily newspaper content. Between 42% and 80% of each major daily newspaper’s audience is now using a digital device.

“As more online news sources such as The Daily Mail and Buzzfeed tailor their content for local audiences Australians are faced with an ever-increasing smorgasbord of news consumption choices. This will inevitably lead to winners and losers in the highly competitive Australian market aiming to attract news seeking audiences.

 “Roy Morgan’s ‘average issue’ print readership and ‘average 7 days’ cross-platform audience numbers are the industry standard for advertisers and media agencies looking to get a real and applicable understanding of how many Australians they can reach.

“Adding exponential depth to these Readership results, Roy Morgan Research’s Single Source data is the preferred multi-media audience measurement currency used by the majority of Australian media strategy, planning and buying agencies and telecommunications, financial services and automotive brands.”

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