Like everyone in the newsagency industry, I look forward to seeing the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) figures although I do confess with less enthusiasm than before
It is split into two sections newspapers and magazines, of course, my main interest is in the newspapers where the same patterns I reported last time showed up again.
Print circulations of Australian newspapers sales decline has continued. Probably the worst hit is Fairfax.
I graphed the print circulation from 2010 to 2015 by title based on current circulation so the big circulations are on the left and they get smaller as you move to the right.
There is no real pattern, they are all down; the average is 30% down over the five years.
Magazines because they are lower in circulation, they tend to deviate more but the result is down.
Looking at the figures I cannot see any switch to be digital. So despite years of effort and large sums spent, neither newspapers nor magazines have significant numbers of digital subscribers as few are paying for what they can get for free on the net. So with newspapers, there is the added problem, as the average age of a reader for print is going up, the newspapers are looking at a demographic nightmare. What is keeping them going for now is print.
For newspapers, you can get further information here. Its got a nice graph on the bottom which is worth studying.
For magazines, click here
