The Australian’s circulation now double that of rival AFR as Fairfax struggles with digital subscriptions
News Corp’s national broadsheet The Australian officially has double the circulation of rival Australian Financial Review’s Monday to Friday print circulation, the latest audit figures have revealed.
Despite a 2.10% year-on-year decline, The Australian remained above the 100,000 copies a day mark, with a Monday to Friday circulation of 101,980.
Fairfax Media’s AFR posted a decline of 10.50% with a Monday to Friday circulation of 50,288, giving The Australian a circulation of double that of its rival.
In positive news for the AFR, its weekend edition bucked the declines to post a modest growth of 0.7% with a circulation of 62,345, up on the 61,911 copies it was selling in the January to March period in 2015.
I don’t understand why all of the papers keep on plummeting. It’s not like the Internet was just invented and people have suddenly discovered online news. Are readers seriously cancelling their subscriptions because all their news needs are now satisfied by click bait?
Hywood can soon take credit for killing off Australia’s best newspaper. On his watch it’s collapsed into a poor imitation of the Oz and on these figures is probably losing as much money.
I keep looking forward to reading the Australian knowing that it gives good comment in contrast of the Fairfax left-wing rubbish.
What is the AFR’s digital subscription trend year on year? You’ve emphasised the decline in print compared to the Australian, yet haven’t provided the same comparison for digital subscriptions.
There we were thinking that digital will kill the Tele or The Age. Suddenly it looks like the AFR is dead on its feet, killed by a management that has no feel for its customer. Criminal.
Meanwhile, the SMH has nearly double the digital subscriptions of The Australian. The Oz also ran a promo not long ago handing out free tablets with digital subs. You would expect a rather large jump with such a generous offer. It’s basically buying subscribers.
Hey Miranda – I really like the interactive charts you’ve added to Mumbrella. What program or app do you use to integrate them into your content? Please share!
Newscorp likes to bundle it’s print editions with digital subscriptions. Has this put any sort of brake on print decline?
The Australian’s rival is the AFR? Since when?
Comparing oranges and grapes is one thing but shouldn’t the comparison be between the Oz’s real rivals – Telegraph/Herald Sun/Courier Mail etc and SMH/Age?
Hi ADHD,
It’s called Infogram – https://infogr.am/
Cheers,
Miranda
Hi Curious,
Fairfax doesn’t release the digital numbers for the AFR.
Cheers,
Miranda
“The Advertiser saw its Monday to Friday circulation slip by 6% to 12,258”
If that was the case The Advertiser would have closed long ago.
Hi Gerard,
Thanks for picking up that – I’d left out a very important 5 – the correct figure is 125,258.
I’ve updated the story.
Cheers,
Miranda
Do note that The Australian’s circulation includes 20,000 (yes, 20,000) bundled sales to airlines, hotels and other assorted organisation versus 6,000 for the Fin.
Good point. There was a time when the AFR was a business news specialist and the Oz was the paper for elderly Victorians retired to the Gold Coast. But the current Fairfax regime took the AFR on a sharp turn toward the Oz, hiring an editor who’s actually flunked out running the Oz with the evident aim of copying it. So now the AFR is full of pious opinion and desperate claims to influence and straight thinking (familiar, Mr Mitchell?). This was followed by a stampede of business readers for the exits, which led to what has been a series of shrinkages in mainly specialist business staff and amplification of the foghorns of opinion. Meanwhile News has been working at every option to fill the spaces Fairfax retreats from and the AFR is the number one target. Which is why they have beefed up their business section etc.
Sadly the result is that we now have two dailies shouting opinions in the undergrad style of The Spectator (oz edition) and no business newspaper.