Readership of newspapers in Australia slipped 3.7% in the year to June but a handful of titles defied the trend.
Now 15.5 million Australians aged 14+ (75%) read or access newspapers in an average week via print or online (website or app) platforms, according to the Roy Morgan Australian Readership report.
The standout performer is the Australian Financial Review (AFR) which over the financial year increased total cross-platform readership by 15.8% to 1.587 million driven by a substantial increase in the AFR’s digital audience, up by 23.5% to 1.337 million.
The West Australian also grew its print and digital readership and increased its cross-platform audience by 3.7% to 1,090,000.
The Saturday Paper had even stronger growth across print and digital readership and grew its total cross-platform audience by 34% to 280,000.
The findings from the Roy Morgan Single Source survey derived from in-depth face-to-face interviews with 1,000 Australians each week and over 50,000 each year.
Australia’s most widely read masthead is the Nine Entertainment owned Sydney Morning Herald with a cross-platform audience of 4,125,000, down 3.6% from a year ago.
Melbourne stablemate The Age is the second most widely read at 2,782,000.
Their two great local rivals fill out the top four with News Corp daily the Herald Sun in third position with a cross-platform audience of 2,729,000 in front of its Sydney counterpart, the Daily Telegraph, which now has a cross-platform audience of 2,625,000r.
National broadsheet The Australian with a cross-platform audience of 2,421,000 (down 5.6%) fills out the top five and has been one of only a few leading newspapers to increase print readership over the past year.
These are the latest findings from the Roy Morgan Single Source survey derived from in-depth face-to-face interviews with 1,000 Australians each week and over 50,000 each year.
Michele Levine, Chief Executive Officer, Roy Morgan, says three-quarters of all Australians aged 14+ consume newspaper content led by Australia’s most widely read mastheads.
On weekend newsappers, the best performer is The Weekend Australian which increased average issue readership by 3% to 593,000.
Australia’s best read weekend newspaper is Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph with an average issue print readership of 714,000, down 17.4% over the past year.
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