ABCs: Fairfax dismisses print circulation as a ‘historical production metric’ as digital rebounds
Fairfax Media has recovered positive growth in its paywall subscribers after last quarter’s decline, with both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald both achieving record figures according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation figures.
The Herald Sun posted the highest quarter-on-quarter digital subs growth, increasing its subscriptions by 12.11 per cent – 6,433 people- to 59,545 from April to June, as the AFL season got into full swing.
That total is less than half than city rival The Age, which has 136,498 subscribers, up 5.40 per cent, while The SMH has 139,988 subs, an increase of 6,286 (4.70 per cent).
News Corp’s The Australian posted a similar rate of growth to its Fairfax rivals, upping its digital subs by 3,137 (4.6 per cent growth).
While there is no doubt that the disruption of media is a tough management job, Fairfax’s deliberate efforts to move the cheese on metrics is ridiculous. For starters: print ads is where its profit comes from today. To be clear: Domain won’t pay the bills (and is in any case in a cyclical sector that’s probably due to turn down). For seconds: there is no profit in digital traffic (unless you are as big as Google). For thirds: Fairfax’s confused strategy has demonstrably undermined its brand quality and will leave it with a bunch of half-baked, slimmed=down know-nothing newsrooms before very long at all.
Lets face it. Advertisers were being swindled for years. Readership figures were all based on assumption and speculation. Now, with digital, we know exactly how many likes, shares, followers and comments are happening and can delve a little deeper to work out whether these are of the quality we desire. The fat profits for media companies of yesterday are drying up, the industry is fragmenting and the old school suits are fighting to continue receiving an inflated pay check. Perhaps in the future, owners of media do not own yachts, who knows?
Wonder if they count all the free copies at airports in these figures?