by Gill Moodie (@GrubstreetSA) The ABC circulation figures tell us that South African newspaper sales with the exception of the vernacular press are in a sustained decline but the Amps readership numbers – the full-year 2012 Amps were released last week – say that most newspaper titles have maintained their readership.
What gives here?
As we puzzle over the numbers, we know that newspapers have been hammered in developed markets – particularly in the US – and as online and cellphone usage spreads and deepens in SA, we all wonder if the downward move of print circulation will accelerate to match the trends overseas.
On the other hand, there is also the view that because we are an emerging market, print still has legs in this country – particularly in the vernacular press led by the fantastic success story of the isiZulu-language Isolezwe.
What actually is the state of the health of our newspapers?
I suspect that the truth lies somewhere in between the ABC and Amps pictures but, first, let’s look at the main trends in the recently released 2012 Amps figures from the South African Audience Research Foundation.
Courtesy of Saarf’s 2012 Amps presentation.
Click here for the full 2012 presentation
The Sunday Times was the big mover. Its readership fell from 10.7% in 2011 to 9.8% in 2012 of the total amount of people surveyed – amounting to more than 3.4-million readers in 2012. This drop was in metropolitan areas, chiefly in Gauteng and among female and white readers.
The Sunday Times’ drop accounts for 80% of the decrease in readership for the weeklies but it still boasts the second-biggest readership of SA’s papers.
The paper that has the biggest readership in the country is that other industry titan, the Daily Sun. Its 2012 readership – 5.5-million – was unchanged from 2011.
When it comes to Isolezwe – which fascinates us all because it suggests the future growth of SA’s newspapers lies in vernacular products – 2012 is the first time that we have the readership of all three editions (the daily, Saturday and the Sunday) because it provides for the first full year for the Saturday edition, which was launched in August 2011.
Altogether, the three editions have 1.5-million readers but, says Saarf, it does look like the Saturday edition is stealing from the Sunday edition. The daily’s readership was slightly up on 2011 (from 2.6% to 2.7% of people surveyed) while the Sunday was slightly down (from 2.5% to 1.9%).
Overall, most newspaper titles have maintained their readership but weeklies are trending downwards.
When you take newspapers and magazines together, while online and mobile reading is growing, it is still low. Those people reading online and mobile are still reading traditionally and so paper remains the dominant platform.
What a different picture to that of ABCs, which is generally bleak and suggests readers are bailing from most newspapers – though where exactly they are going to is unclear.
What clouds our assessment of ABC v Amps is the fact that there is debate around how many people are reading a single copy of a paper (many say the Amps estimates are too high). On the other hand, we also know that in times of economic hardship, more people – especially in low LSM-groups – do share a single copy so this is consistent with what we see in the Daily Sun – where circulation is in decline and its readership is stable.
Minette Ferreira, the GM of Media24’s English titles (that includes the Daily Sun) as well as Beeld and Rapport told Grubstreet: “We are delighted to see the stability in the Daily Sun readership figures. While our circulation woes are continuing and the current economic conditions are not working in our favour, it’s clear that our reach into the mass market remains unrivalled. The Daily Sun reader is still fiercely loyal and continues to engage with the people’s paper daily and in their millions.
“For me, it’s essential that these readership numbers are used when evaluating a product, looking at circulation figures in isolation does not tell the full story. Readership and market penetration consideration is crucial to fully understand the role a title plays in the lives of their readers.”
Meanwhile, over at Isolezwe – where circulation figures have been on the up for some time – Brian Porter, the joint GM of Independent Newspapers in KwaZulu-Natal, said: “This ‘cannibalisation’ theory (from the Sunday to Saturday) comes as a bit of a surprise to us because all three editions have had very strong sales in the past year. So from a copy-sales point-of-view, we certainly haven’t seen buyers replacing one title with another.
“It is a concern from an advertiser perspective because we know how important these (Amps) figures are for planners making decisions based on reach. Isolezwe ngeSonto (the Sunday edition) has built up a nice advertiser base over the past five years. We get a lot of support from local advertisers who base their budget on what happens at the tills and there’s been no drop-off there.
“We also need to understand what these numbers represent. It’s an estimation – using the best possible methodology – of how many people read a copy within the publication period. All the isiZulu publications have a large rural component so we know that quite large readership fluctuations are not necessarily statistically significant. In rural KZN, we have to accept that 768 respondents represent a market of 3 477 000, making for sizeable standard deviations and therefore readership ranges.”
Times Media Group MD Mike Robertson did not respond to requests for comment on the Sunday Times’ Amps figures.
While some say that comparing and bringing together Amps and ABC figures is a game with numbers that can be shaped to suit any publisher’s purpose, I think we can discern some big trends here:
- That buying newspapers is certainly in decline;
- But that the attitudes to reading traditionally (on paper) have not shifted as dramatically as in other more developed markets. South Africans are still largely happy to get their news on paper!
- If this is true – and, as Amps says, those people reading online and mobile are still reading traditionally – we have to question the supposition that South Africans are buying fewer newspapers because they are getting their news digitally?
- Which leads us to two really scary questions: a). Are South Africans perhaps abandoning buying newspapers because the content is irrelevant and uninteresting to them rather than preferring to get it digitally?; and b). Are those that are abandoning buying newspapers perhaps not replacing this with a digital platform? Perhaps their appetite for local news is less.
These are questions to drill into for another column and certainly for deeper reader research.
– SA’s leading media commentator, Gill Moodie, offers intelligence on media – old and new. Reprinted from her site Grubstreet.