ABCs: Herald Sun is first title to see drop in digital subscribers
The Herald Sun has become the first masthead to record a quarter-on-quarter decline in digital sales, newly released numbers reveal.
The News Corp title saw the number of subscribers to its paywall fall by 1.85% from 50,360 to 49,425, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations data.
It was the first time that any Australian newspaper site’s audited paywall subscriber numbers have gone backwards, after it put up a paywall, compared to the previous quarter.
The Herald Sun’s weekday digital subscriber numbers
Even the spin is awful. The Australian says 6.7% loss is a stabilising trend. AFRis near terminal for print, given its logistics. And the Fairfax “reach” nonsense beggars belief !
If this is the best these folk can do its time to get some new people at the top.
Interesting the Oz digital only grew by 176 subs, I was one of them ( I expect a personal thank you note and gift basket from Rupert any day now).
I took up a discounted sub offer, 12 weeks for $1. Seems their discount promo’s aren’t pulling in the punters.
@Henry Jones: the fact that they have to resort to this sort of deep discounting just to practically stay still in terms of digital subscriber numbers speaks volumes. Similar for the Fairfax mastheads : they have been offering half price digital subscriptions for months now, and still only achieved anaemic growth in the last quarter. I’m guessing their churn rates must be high. And as for the weekday circ figures for Fairfax print — diabolical.
Liam, agreed. A smart consumer with a spare moment and a calendar reminder might even churn thru their offers… dumping as the discount period ends and the full fee looms and signing up for the latest discounted offer… I have plenty of email accounts and credit cards, not that I would do that of course. 😉
RIP Canberra Times
It takes five seconds to delete smh and Fairfax from my cookies through my Mac privacy settings while News Ltd the same with telegraph and new. Many other mags use the same kind of cookie formula.
These numbers are fine as 482* people now read each printed and digital copy on average.
If it takes the death of all the Newspapers in this country to kill off Murdoch’s influence over our society and its goverance then it will have been a price worth paying.