The magazine industry is doing better than its counterparts in newspapers when it comes to retaining readers, with the majority of New Zealand publications showing stable or increasing readership according to Nielsen Consumer and Media Insights.
Weekly: Readership / Circulation
Woman’s Day: 822,000 / 104,000
TV Guide: 550,000 / 128,000
NZ Woman’s Weekly: 806,000 / 70,500
New Idea: 443,000 / 43,700
NZ Listener: 262,000 / 60,800
(Note: circulation is a measure of a publication’s sales, as measured by the ABC; readership is a measure of possible readers, from the result of surveys conducted by Nielsen. These two reports are independent of each other.)
Amongst those aged 10+, Woman’s Day has the highest readership of the weeklies with 822,000 . Sky TV and Fairfax has the highest overall magazine readership with its monthly Skywatch magazine, read by 975,000 people with a circulation of 514,000.
However, not all is well in the world of glossies, and the Nielsen report shows several weeklies with decreasing readership, including the NZ Listener which lost 25,000 readers, and The TV Guide, which lost almost 50,000.
Monthly and Bi-Monthly: Readership / Circulation
Australian Women’s Weekly: 739,000 / 77,200
Healthy Food Guide: 403,000 / 47,400
Mindfood: 190,000 / 35,500
Metro: 154,000 / 10,600
NZ Autocar: 216,000 / 9,200
Good: 44,000 / 11,500
NZ Life & Leisure 157,000 / 31,492
Monthly and bi-monthly publications fared much better than the weeklies, with 20 showing a statistically significant increase in readership since last year.
The largest percentage increase in readership (47 percent) was seen by Good magazine (a part of StopPress’ stable), although the largest overall increase in readership was by NZ Autocar, which grew its ranks by 67,000 readers. Fairfax Magazines’ NZ Life & Leisure continued its consistent rise, up to 157,000 readers from 117,000 a year ago while circ was up to 31,492 from 29,495 at the same time last year.
(Image Credit: Grant Hutchinson)