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40September/October 2015
MEDIA Print Sales
A little misleading
it’s a trick
September/October 2015 41
O
NE statistic itself betrays
the problem with the read-
ership statistics collected by
Newsbrands Ireland (for-
merly National Newspapers
of Ireland) in the most recent survey of
Irish newspaper readers.
Ten percent. That’s how much Irish
Times readership is reported to have
increased in the year to June . The
survey, carried out by Millward Brown,
shows a total of , readers of the
newspaper during that period.
Trouble is, Audit Bureau of Circula-
tion (ABC) figures for the same time
period show newspaper sales in decline.
In the first six months of , the
Irish Times sold an average of ,
print copies – down .% year-on-year.
With its digital edition having a daily
total of ,, the combined sale was
,. And digital sales come with a
caveat, as only of those subscriptions
were sold at “full rate”.
The inconsistency is not simply on
view at the Irish Times.
The Irish Independent ABC figure, for
example, is down , (.%), yet
readership holds up, and the Examiner
drops , (.%) as readership
increases. Other papers show falls in
readership, yet similar disconnections
in the alleged momentum of change can
be seen across all daily and Sunday
titles.
Clearly, something is going on here.
How can a newspaper show up to a ten
percent boost in readership while circu-
lation falls by five percent?
Part of the explanation comes from
the combining of different news prod-
ucts. The JNRS measures readers in
print, digital, and those who read both.
And while circulation revenue declines
tell their own story, the most recent
story registered an overall increase of
% in online readership. The Herald
registered an astonishing % increase
online.
Readership, as measured by the JNRS,
has always been a more slippery concept
than circulation. Circulation is on the
face of it simple. Just count how many
copies are sold. Titles have some leeway
in that they can give away discount
copies, or distribute bulks to hotels, but
those numbers are broken out too by the
Audit Bureau of Circulation, so ulti-
mately there’s a concrete number that
the ABC can stand over.
Readership can be more amorphous.
First, there’s the passaround theory.
After I finish the paper I paid for, the
theory goes, it may be picked up and
read by a co-worker, or a spouse or other
household member, or a friend in the
pub. So as a rule, there’s more than one
reader for every copy sold. Precisely
how many is a matter of some debate.
Second, not every reader buys a copy
of the paper every day. In fact, fewer
than one in every twelve newspaper
buyers is a consistent daily purchaser.
Some readers buy only one paper a
week, or two, or three.
And some only make a purchase once
a fortnight, or once a month. So while
the paper may sell around X copies on
any given day, a lot more than X individ-
uals will have bought at least one paper
over the course of a week, or month, or
year. Readership statistics can therefore
be subject to recall rates. The survey
asks if a respondent read a paper “yes-
terday” (or “in the last week” in the case
of Sundays) but it cannot control for
those who misremember how long it
was since they last read.
JNRS has not adjusted its measure-
ment techniques since , so a
change in the definition of “reader”
since the last survey period is not the
explanation. It seems more likely that
behaviour is changing. More people
read papers, but they buy fewer copies.
The industry is losing daily buyers, but
gaining some new occasional buyers.
Unfortunately for the bottom line, the
former outnumber the latter.
And then there’s online readership.
Unfortunately, while the strength of
online numbers suggest old readers of
the paper are being more than replaced
by new readers online, those new read-
ers aren’t worth as much to the
circulation departments, or advertisers.
Most online readers bring in no circula-
tion revenue at all, either accessing
news that is offered for free, or behind a
porous subscription paywall.
The paywall trade-off: bringing in
paying customers, but at the cost of
advertising revenues because most
browsers are unwilling to pay, accounts
for the extremely leaky Irish Times pay-
wall. Having delayed its introduction
several times, Tara Street eventually
went ahead with the change earlier this
year. A second paywalled daily news
product from the Sunday Times team,
which would have competed directly
with the Irish Times, is currently stuck
in development hell as the two Times
titles argue before the courts over
whether consumers would be confused
by the two similarly named websites/
apps. •
All titles show falls in
readership, but distort
them, getting away with
it because of increasing
online readership,
declining daily readers
and faulty memories.
By Gerard Cunningham
The graph of
digital brands
is dominated
by traditional
names, led
by RTÉ, the
Independent
and the
Times
.
TheJournal.ie is
the only truly
new Irish name
in the top ten
“
Print & Digital Print & Digital Print Only Print Only Digital Only Digital Only
Figure (‘000) Percentage Figure (‘000” Percentage Figure (‘000) Percentage
Table 1: JNRS 2014/2015 – Average Issue Readership (AIR)
Any Newspaper 2947 81.9 2733 75.9 720 20
Any Daily 2197 61 1866 51.8 615 17.1
Any Sunday 1983 55.1 1885 52.4 211 5.9
