Feather Brooksbank Analysis of latest National Readership Survey
Newspapers have never had it so tough collectively, and the latest National Readership Survey (NRS) figures show little let up. Charlotte Bell, director of media planner and buyer Feather Brooksbank analyses the latest NRS release.
The latest figures from the National Readership Survey covering the period April 2010 to March 2011 reflect another negative performance for the majority of national newspapers with only the Guardian showing an increase in average issue readership (+2.7%). All other titles both Dailies and Sundays posted a fall in readership with some showing significant decline, in particular the quality newspapers, many of which saw double digit percentage decline.
In the Daily market the biggest losers were the Times which lost 264,000 readers (-14.9%), the FT losing 51,000 readers (-12%) and the Independent losing 73,000 readers (-11.5%). Both mid-market titles suffered slight dips (Daily Mail – 2.2%, Daily Express – 2.7%), and the largest selling newspaper the Sun faired better than its rivals only losing 0.4% of its readership.
In the Sunday market, again the broadsheets suffered most with the Sunday Telegraph posting losses of 15.2% and the Independent on Sunday down 13.7% year on year. The mid-markets suffered even more than their Daily stable mates with the Mail on Sunday down 7.1% and the Sunday Express down 9.4%. In the Popular market the News of the World remains easily the largest selling title and had the smallest percentage year on year loss (-2.4%) although still lost 187,000 readers.
The fact that newspapers are losing readers is hardly new news, so it is perhaps more interesting to look at which particular sector of the population is ditching them. If we combine the latest figures for all the national newspapers (average issue readership) it is evident that they are not going to disappear anytime soon with almost 54% of the population reading a national newspaper, amounting to nearly 27 million adults. This represents an overall decline of 4.55% year on year but the latest figures show some real differences across the age groups. The over 65’s for example have remained pretty static year on year (-0.35%), whilst the group showing the greatest decline is the 35-44’s with a 10% fall in readers from this age group. So it is clear that newspaper readership is aging, it looks like the young are going straight to the web, those in the middle are switching their allegiance from paper to web and the older generation is remaining reasonably loyal to the hard copy format.