The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald each reported more than 14% decline in circulation in the October to December quarter. The Herald Sun and The Daily Telegraph reported declines of more than 4%. The Australian circulation fell 8.4% and the Australian Financial Review 7.7%. B&T has the details.
The declines I am seeing in across the counter sales in retail newsagencies are not as great because the audit numbers, especially those from Fairfax, include a continuation of a clean out of the promotional copies circulated. That said, the importance and value of daily newspapers continues to decline for newsagents.
The interesting thing is where these figures will compare with numbers from 18 months ago from the US where, from some data I’ve seen, indicated many papers went into mid teen level drops in their general circulation figures and more importantly given a current topic their delivery numbers in the metropolitan areas. It would seem that the really tough decline is ahead of us in the next 12 months .