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. Continue reading “Readership: Numbers that didn’t make the news”
