Good news. Circulation figures might be falling overall but people say they are reading more. In the case of Virgin Australia Voyeur some 67% more. GQ attracted another 48%. Men's Fitness beefed-up by 27%. New Idea grows 16%. And there was even more good news - the whole market grew by 2.4% according to Roy Morgan figures.
Despite the number of magazine copies selling across the market declining 6.23% overall, advertisers will be happy to hear that more and more people are reading magazines in the year to June 2013.
Roy Morgan readership June 2013.
Pacific Magazines chief Nick Chan said that there are a range of different theories as to why readership is increasing but circulation is in decline. "In tough economic times, it might be that there is a greater pass-on factor. Maybe people can't afford to buy them but they still want to read them.
"Regardless of the reason, it's great to see that people are still reading magazines. Readership is still the metric that media buyers look to."
The big star of the season has been Woolworths' Fresh magazine. The title only hit the shelves in April, and as such has no comparative figures, but already has a readership of 1.7 million people, making it the fourth most read magazine in the country, behind Woman's Day, Women's Weekly and Better Homes and Gardens.
The strongest performing category has been computer, gaming and info tech, with an 8.2% readership increase, led by titles like Next Media's Hyper, which grew its readership base by 48%. The fishing category also increased by 8.2%, with Express Media Group's Modern Fishing growing an impressive 21.7%.
Other categories leading the pack included business, financial and airline, up 8.1%; the motorcycle category, up 6.6%; and music and movies, increasing 5.1%. Men's lifestyle saw a modest lift of 0.6%, spurred largely by growth at NewsLifeMedia's GQ.
It wasn't all smooth sailing. The biggest decline was felt in the TV category, despite a 39.6% increase from Next Media's Soap World, with substantial declines for both TV Week and Foxtel Magazine.
The women's lifestyle category dropped 14.4% in total, with Bauer's Cleo, Cosmopolitan and Shop Til You Drop nosediving 24.2%, 23.2% and 32.6% respectively.
Meanwhile, Roy Morgan's recently established masthead readership figures have also shown some solid results, indicating significant increases in overall readership as a result of combining digital with print readership. The most impressive result was seen by Bauer's Australian Women's Weekly, which had a print readership of 1.8 million readers in the year to June, compared with 2.3 million total masthead readers, indicating that the title has around half a million readers across its digital platforms.
Bauer's Woman's Day recorded a print readership of 1.93 million readers, while its masthead figure reached 2.07 million readers. Pacific Magazines' New Idea recorded a print readership of 1.38 million readers and a total masthead readership of 1.43 million readers.
Figures from the Readership Works, delivered by Ipsos, will hit the market on Monday. It will be interesting to see how they compare via the new EMMA system.
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