ABCs: The Age sees digital subscriptions slide as The Australian nearly doubles AFR print sales
Digital subscriptions for Fairfax Media’s two main metro newspapers again dropped quarter-on-quarter, according to the latest audit measurements, with The Age’s digital subscriptions also dropping year-on-year for the first time.
In the August to December quarter, The Age slipped backwards by 2,280 subscribers compared with the same time last year, while quarter-on-quarter the masthead lost 2,513 subscribers.
The Sydney Morning Herald grew its digital subscriptions year-on-year by 2.1% to 138,165, although they slipped back compared with the previous quarter by 1,587 subscribers.
It’s wrong to compare the oz with afr. One is a pure biz paper. The oz is really competing with metros which is why is does well in Brisbane and Adelaide. The afr is simply a bad business paper that is becoming tawdry on occasion. But the very strange thing is its refusal to publish digital subscriptions which should be large, probably bigger than the print number?
If looking at the Fairfax stable doesn’t tell you straight away what is wrong with this horrible, stupid company, this will: http://quadrant.org.au/rotting-head/
How does a board and management so absolutely inept get to keep drawing salaries. Fairfax could have hired journalists and done journalism. Instead they launched Daily Life and made Clementine Ford the poster girl for everything that’s wrong about the joint..
Fairfax deserves whatever happens to them. Although, as the Quadrant writer points out, Melbourne (and Sydney) will soon have only one paper apiece, a crappy one.
“Fairfax Media’s Canberra Times posted the largest decline across the Monday to Friday titles, with its sales down 18.7% year-on-year to sit at 18,837 for the December quarter.”
I can vouch for that. They lost two more subscribers last Monday when I cancelled the home delivery which had been in place – unbroken – since we moved to Canberra in 1970. I got sick of their constant advocacy parading as journalism on subjects such as refugees, climate change, women’s sport and foreign crap. Repeated complaints to them via letters, emails and Facebook didn’t stop the garbage so I took matters into my own hands.
There are two things wrong with this article: the AFR loses a lot less money that the Australian and may even make a small profit. The Australian loses plenty. So. what’s the definition of success? Separately, to say that “newspapers are dealing with the challenge of the internet and doing quite well” borders on laughable for anyone who is currently involved in the financial side of the game. Newspapers have no idea how to monetise the internet – check out how many are changing their strategy between paywalls, freemium etc. If newspapers knew how to deal with the internet, the Daily Telegraph would release its digital subscriber numbers.
They were giving away The Australian with the Telegraph weren’t they ?