2. Audience
In the State of the News Print Media in Australia Report 2006 there were detailed chapters on the numbers of newspaper and magazine titles and on the historical and current circulation and readership. In addition to updating circulation and readership data by inclusion of 2007 figures, this supplement provides the most recently available data on website usage and, hence, more complete data on the state of the news print media audience.
Notwithstanding the rise of other media, there appears to have been no significant diminution of public interest in buying and reading national and metropolitan newspapers in the last year. There have been the usual increases and decreases in the audited circulation and polled readership of individual titles but overall the figures remain fairly robust. Additionally, the accessing of newspapers via their on-line sites, with greater information becoming available about the number of visitors to such news sites, suggests that any losses in circulation through lesser sales of the printed version has been exceeded by gains through on-line visits.
There have been significant changes in the methods used by the Audit Bureau of Circulation in assessing the number of newspapers sold in the interest of greater accuracy. The Bureau is now auditing circulation more frequently and analysing those figures to show more clearly the types of sales. While these changes appear to have met the demands for greater accuracy in the auditing of circulation, debates about methods of assessing "readership" continue as indicated below. Similarly, there are now questions about how best to assess the number of visitors to newspaper websites, and how to assess their usage of those sites, so that a more complete set of data on "circulation" as a whole can be put together. One question that remains unanswered is: do visits to newspaper websites indicate additional readers, so that the total is taken to indicate a greater level of "circulation"? Or are those accessing newspaper websites supplementing their print experience?
Overall the proportion of the national population over 14 years of age reading newspapers continues to be around 54 per cent for Monday to Friday editions and 63 and 65 per cent for the Saturday and Sunday editions, respectively.
Notwithstanding the rise of other media, a large proportion of the Australian reading-age public continues to buy and read national, metropolitan and regional newspapers regularly. An even bigger number reads the (mostly) free community newspapers.
Titles & ownership
The significant ownership change during the year has been the merger of the two large companies, Rural Press and Fairfax Media, leaving only one metropolitan daily paper, The West Australian, controlled by proprietors independent of News Limited and Fairfax. There have been no newspaper closures in the past twelve months and one new metropolitan outlet opened, the exclusively online brisbanetimes.com.au, published by Fairfax Media. Currently there are 52 daily English-language newspapers (two national, 13 metropolitan, 36 regional and one suburban). Additionally there are eleven metropolitan Sunday newspapers.
The number of regional daily titles has remained constant at 36 over that period, although some of what were formerly independent publishing companies have become part of the larger entities, with Fairfax Media (largely through Rural Press) being the major buyer. This trend has continued and there are now only two family-controlled regional dailies, those in Shepparton and Mildura. The remainder are owned by News, Fairfax and APN News and Media (with West Australian Newspapers controlling one other).
News Limited acquired the largely Sydney-based FPC Courier Newspapers and, thus, acquired a dozen or so additional titles. Otherwise there have not been significant changes in the Suburban/Community newspapers (180 titles). The Country Press category newspapers (about 240 titles) and the Regional Community category newspapers (around 160 titles) also remain steady, although some of the titles were acquired by the larger publishers as a part of the deals that saw regional dailies change hands in Albury, Wagga Wagga and Mount Isa. Most of the country and regional community newspapers have relatively small circulations but stress local news content. Many bush radio stations continue to rely on them for local news content. As previously reported, some of these suburban/community newspapers contain comprehensive local news and information and have substantial circulation (e.g., The St George & Sutherland Shire Leader with 135,000), while others vary from being little more than advertising vehicles to papers with substantial news content.
In addition to the Anglophone press, there are more than a hundred non-English language newspapers, nine of them dailies (four of which are in Chinese languages and the others in Greek, Italian, Korean, Serbian and Vietnamese).
The magazine market has hundreds of titles, the dominant proprietors being ACP Magazines (eleven of the top circulation 20), Pacific Magazines (four of the top 20) and Federal Publishing (two of the top 20), recently acquired by News Limited. Very few are news magazines, with only four significant titles in this area.