Audience research is a wondrous thing. It makes me feel like a young child in a carnival. My head spins at the sight of all the swings and roundabouts.
The past fortnight has seen the release of two separate sets of readership research. Last week we received the quarterly survey by Nielsen, and a week earlier there was an annual snapshot from Roy Morgan.
The two cannot be directly compared because they relate to different measurement cycles and, doubtless, different methodology. The Roy Morgan survey also embraces online readership that is not captured by topline results of the other survey.
However, the consequence of wading through both surveys was a feeling that I spent too much time on the swings and had too many rides on the roundabout. I felt giddy.
The Roy Morgan survey of the year to June suggests that, although the New Zealand Herald and Waikato Times lost readers of their print editions (the former down 31,000 and the latter 12,000), The Post, The Press, and the Otago Daily Times gained readers. In the case of The Post it was an impressive 16,000 readers.
The Nielsen survey, however, paints a different picture. It suggests that all five metropolitans have suffered declining print readership over the past year.
In order to regain some sense of equilibrium, I temporarily put aside the Roy Morgan survey to concentrate on the Nielsen results. This was solely because I have a longer record of that research company’s audience figures.
The survey released last week allows a comparison of average issue readership (in the period covering the third quarter of 2023 to the second quarter of 2024) with that of the previous year. It shows New Zealand Herald average issue readership down from 545,000 to 521,000 (a 4.4 per cent drop), the Waikato Times down from 58,000 to 45,000 (a 22.4 per cent decline), The Post down from 128,000 to 111,000 (down 13.3 per cent), The Press down from 113,000 to 90,00 (a 20.3 per cent decline), and the Otago Daily Times down from 95,000 to 80,000 (a drop of 15.8 per cent).
Only the Herald on Sunday recorded year-on-year gains (from 291,000 to 313,000). The Sunday Star-Times dropped 20,000 readers (to 178,000) over the same period.
The Nielsen survey includes quarter-by-quarter comparisons but I believe year-on-year comparisons provide a better picture because they are not subject to the seasonal variations on audience behaviour. Similarly, I believe average issue readership is a better indicator than cumulative totals.
The numbers for metro dailies are consistent with recent trends in the Nielsen surveys. Each of the five newspapers has experienced peaks then declines since the year 2000. The Herald peaked at 608,000 in 2021 and since then has suffered a 14.3 per cent decline. The Waikato Times peaked later (2022) at 76,000 and has slid almost 41 per cent. The Post peaked in 2021 at 169,000 and is now down 34.3 per cent, while The Press peaked a year earlier at 143,000 and is now down 37 per cent. The ODT also peaked in 2020 at 104,000 and has since dropped by 23 per cent. Sundays are also down on earlier readership since 2000.
None of the newspapers now makes public its paid circulation figures so we have only readership – a calculation based on sampling – to go by. Nonetheless, the picture for print that is painted over time does not look good. Losing a third or more of your audience in as little as three years paints a grim portrait. And Nielsen’s year-on-year print readership numbers for our metropolitan papers have been heading in only one direction over the past three years – down.
Stuff carried an item on the Nielsen survey that painted a far more positive picture than what I have painted here. However, it was based on quarter-to-quarter comparisons and cumulative totals. It also aggregated print and online. It stated:
Flagship subscription masthead The Post has grown its national audience by 17% this quarter, with 922,000 Kiwis a month now reading The Post in print or online, up from 788,000 in the previous quarter. The Press and Waikato Times have also seen impressive growth in their print and digital audiences, with The Press growing 16% to 738,000 and Waikato Times up 22% to 495,000.
I don’t dispute Stuff’s report but you have seen here how year-on-year comparisons of average issue readership over time tell a different story. It is for you to decide which set of numbers gives the better indication of the ongoing state of the industry. It may also make you feel you are in that carnival with its abundance of swings and roundabouts.
Here it is useful to return to the Roy Morgan survey. Publishers try to take comfort from the addition of digital audiences to their readership numbers, and the Roy Morgan media release trumpeted the news that “nearly two-thirds of New Zealanders aged 14+, 2.71 million (63%) now read or access newspapers in an average 7-day period via print and online (website or app) platforms”.
That doesn’t run easily off the tongue, but the import was that the overall audience was steady, even if there were swings and roundabouts when you drilled down to individual titles.
The digital audiences for the Otago Daily Times, The Press, and the Sunday Star-Times were up and the Herald’s online reach was down only marginally. The Post, however, had a worrying year-on-year digital decline of almost 20 percent.
What is perhaps more significant is the degree to which online audiences outstrip those for print. The Herald’s digital audience is more than three times larger, the ODT’s is almost 2.5 times bigger, the Waikato Times almost double, whileThe Post and The Press have more than 40 per cent larger digital audiences than they do print.
If they were able to translate the advertising on those digital platforms into the same yield they achieve from print advertising, their futures would be rosy. Sadly, this isn’t the case, and the digital component of their revenue continues to lag behind that of print – even in its diminished state.
The readership news from Nielsen on weekly magazines was no better than for newspapers. All four weekly titles were down. The New Zealand Listener dropped from 216,000 to 199,000 year-on-year, TV Guide from 354,000 to 304,000, and Woman’s Day from 371,000 to 342,000. The New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, although it dropped from 457,000 to 413,000, remains the country’s most read magazine outside the Automobile Association’s AA Directions that is distributed to members.
Happy Birthday
Happy 10th birthday to The Spinoff, a creative and welcome addition to New Zealand’s media landscape. Founder Duncan Grieve nicely summed up its beginnings in an email to supporters yesterday.
Ten years ago tomorrow, The Spinoff sputtered into life. At the time we had two staff – me and Alex Casey, both somehow still here. We also had just one subject (TV) and no audience. As I write in an epic essay to be published tomorrow, it was essentially an accident that we started and thought might last a year if we were lucky. At the end of that first year, we expanded our scope to become essentially what we are today and have only occasionally looked back. The past decade has been thrilling, terrifying, hilarious and often very moving.
Like others that took the plunge into the uncharted waters of the cyber ecosystem, The Spinoff richly deserves our ongoing support.