For people in the newsagency industry, the health of the industry is depended on newspapers. People come for many reasons into the shop and one of the main ones if not the main one is newspapers. So like others in the industry I was keenly waiting the official results of the audits although unlike many I was not concerned with readership which advertiser are but with circulation.
Because of changes in the rules, we cannot get a comparison with last year till next quarter which is a bit silly as surely the circulation figures could be given as before.
Nor unlike most people do I care who sells what as it makes no difference to us whether the people buy an Australian, Financial Review or a Daily Telegraph. Just as long as they buy something. So I noticed in my city Melbourne, we have a slight drop in the Herald Sun and a slight increase in the Age. In Sydney we have a tiny drop when you add up the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph. Overall in a market measured in 100,000’s the differences came to a few hundred up and down so newspapers are steady and this steady trend seems Australia wide. So the results were better then most expected.
What I would like to see is this audit in revenue dollars but I doubt we would see that!
