Business Day
*Newspapers continue to battle in bleak environment* *Trevor Neethling, Business Day, Johannesburg, 27 February 2012*DAILY newspapers have lost about 90,000 buyers over the past year, according to the latest quarterly data from the Audit Bureau of Circulation.
The data for October to December last year show that daily newspapers sold 97,000 fewer (-6.7%) copies compared to the same quarter in 2010.
The drop outlines the bleak environment in which print media operates and follows last week's dire outlook from Caxton Media which forecast that the sector would make further losses to digital products in both circulation and advertising.
Among the biggest losers in the daily newspaper market was The Star, down 17% in daily sales and 10% in total circulation, and the tabloid Daily Sun, down 8% in both copy sales and circulation.
The Star's drop comes after its owners, Independent News and Media SA, earlier this month announced executive editorial changes across its newspaper stable. Sunday Independent editor Makhudu Sefara --- widely regarded as having turned around the fortunes of the Sunday paper --- has been appointed as the new editor of The Star.
Independent News will hope that he can do the same for The Star, their flagship newspaper and money-spinner. But Mr Sefara will have his work cut out as total circulation now stands at 128683 copies, down 10% from 143,084.
Daily Sun, which lost its two most influential executives, founder Deon du Plessis who died after a long illness in September, and editor-in-chief Themba Khumalo, who resigned in October, lost 33,000 sales a day compared to the same period last year.
In contrast, The Times, a serious competitor to The Star, increased its daily copy sales by 12,700 to 42,000, a 42% increase. Its subscription base also grew but this has drawn criticism because it is linked to subscriptions of the Sunday Times, its sister newspaper.
Afrikaans newspapers Beeld, Burger and Rapport saw total circulation fall 12%, 4% and 10%, respectively.
A senior executive said they continued to feel the effects of Media 24's failed implementation of its circulation, subscription and distribution IT platform Cycad, which has played havoc with their figures for more than a year.
A new system was being installed and the situation was improving.Zulu newspaper Isolezwe continues to find readers and is up 2.7% daily and 7% on Sundays.
It is now SA's third-biggest newspaper, selling 103,467 copies a day.In the battle for the quality Sunday market both the Sunday Times (462,895) and the Sunday Independent (39,129) managed to grow 4% while City Press (149,265) had dropped.
It did not get any better for the Sunday tabloids as Sunday Sun (213,041) and Sunday World (146,149) shed 6% and 4%, respectively.
Consumer magazines also failed to buck the trend with real circulation falling 3.4%. While single copy sales fell by 4.3%, subscriptions increased by 9.3%.
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