The mastheads now attract audiences from interstate in larger numbers with the Sydney Morning Herald reaching 774,000 people outside of NSW in an average 7 days, bringing its total readership to 3.3 million. Similarly, for Australia’s biggest selling newspaper of the printed edition, Victoria’s Herald Sun, the total audience reading it’s content is 3.0 million, 590,000 more than ten years ago when we consolidate print and online, with 549,000 coming from outside of Victoria.
National and Metro Daily Newspaper Audience, 2002 & 2012 – Australians 14+ (000’s)
.aspx?width=460&height=207)
Source: Roy Morgan Single Source, July 2001-June 2002 (n=56,030), July 2011-June 2012 (n=53,511). All figures in the above table are 000’s. * State only for non-national titles ** Total Readership and website visitation in last 7 days
George Pesutto, General Manager Media & Communications, Roy Morgan Research, says:
“We all accept that major media companies are now more than just a newspaper, television station or even radio station. This data demonstrates that all major metropolitan dailies and national newspapers are in great shape if the measure is the number of people each publisher engages with. And it appears the rate of migration from the printed edition is strongly influenced by the quality and evolution of their own online offering.
“Clearly there is more loyalty for the brand than perhaps many have given credit for. More importantly, these publications are attracting more people than 10 years ago. All that is needed now is a model to generate revenue from that strength.
“For some mastheads, this will be their highest readership ever recorded”