Which Way Did They Go?

Why we need a joint industry committee on print media research

Richard Wilson, March 14, 1997

Morgan Readership results for the period to December 1996 were released recently. A couple of weeks earlier we received the ABC circulation audit for the same period.

No one has ever been able to explain to me why there doesn't need to be a correlation between these two sets of figures. Intuitively you would think that if you sold about the same number of magazines as last year then the number of readers would probably stay the same. And, if you sold less magazines this year, then correspondingly the number of readers would go down. And perhaps, if you sold more magazines then the number of readers would go up.

That may be the case elsewhere but no so here in Australia. When a magazine sells no more copies than it did last year then readers appear to leave it in droves or conversely join its audience in vast hoards akin to a Mongol invasion. When a magazine sells less copies than last year then thousands more people fight to eyeball the diminishing circulation. Strange times indeed, but nevertheless true if you are to believe the latest figures from Roy Morgan Research.

Below is a table which shows what has happened to the circulation of our leading magazines over the past 12 months and what happened to their readership. Often the results appear to have nothing in common.

Readership vs. Circulation Trend Comparisons

Source: ABC Audit DEC 1996 and Roy Morgan Readership DEC 1996

If I were the publishers of New Weekly I would have to be delighted with the latest results from Morgan Readership. While suffering a decrease in circulation of 3%, they have managed to entice 27% more people to peruse the "good oil" in fewer copies.

By the same token I would be pretty upset over at Who Weekly having held circulation this year to discover that 10% of my readers have "gone missing presumed dead" during the last 12 months.

One could argue, I suppose, that Who Weekly readers have changed. No longer the generous "share the copy with everyone" type of old, they have become the "take it home – you’re not seeing my copy" type who seems to be characterising a number of the magazines this year.

Another victim of this new style of jealous reader is Better Homes and Gardens, which has enjoyed continual circulation growth over the last few years. But flying in the face of this trend its readership has fallen according to the latest Morgan figures. Stranger things have been known to happen and one such thing is the change in New Woman's readership, another from the Murdoch stable. Having maintained a stable circulation throughout 1996, the same numbers of copies are now being read by 24% more people. Murdoch I guess can take comfort in the knowledge that for every bewildering loss there seems to be an equally inexplicable gain.

Vogue Entertaining has the same problem. Selfish, unsharing readers are replacing the generous "show the magazine to all your friends" types of old. Having more or less maintained circulation over the last twelve months this publication lost a whopping 29% of its readership. Just one more mag falling foul of the jealous closet reader stalking the magazine stands throughout 1996.

Enough cynical speculation! By far the best way to establish the overall relationship between circulation and readership is to carry out a correlation between both sets of figures – which I duly did. Unlike studies that look at month on month comparisons this correlation looked at a year on year trend comparison for all 35 magazines. More than enough time for the two sets of figures to stabilise one would think.

Lo and behold, the correlation between circulation and readership trends is only .59. That gives an R² value of .36, which means that only 36% of the change in readership can be explained by the change in circulation. In other words two-thirds of the change in readership is being caused by something other than circulation change.

So what is producing these differences if not circulation changes. Is it that primary readers (the buyers of the magazine) are becoming more covetous of their copies and refusing to share them with their friends or families? Or worse, are buyers becoming so turned off with the magazines they are buying that they aren't even bothering to read them?

Or has it something to do with the "composite" readership methodology used in this country and nowhere else in the world. Morgan uses arguably four different methods to measure what others measure with the one method. A full analysis of the Morgan approach and those used in the rest of the world is the subject of my next article.

Gary Morgan evidently agrees that methodology has something to do with it. In a paper presented on behalf of Morgan Readership at the World Readership Symposium VII in Berlin in 1995 he concludes by saying, "...a change in RPC (Readers per copy) could be caused by the methodology or changes in the methodology. These possible causes should be investigated by the data collector before releasing the readership". Well, I for one couldn't agree more!

At present we have no syndicated quality of reading or involvement measures available and no way of determining whether a reader is a regular reader, primary reader or occasional reader. At a time when reader involvement is more likely than ever to determine the usage of magazines as an advertising medium it is ludicrous that this country has no industry standardised involvement measures. Geoff Isaac and I presented a paper at the Worldwide Readership Symposium in Berlin in 1995 where we showed that reader trust was the primary determinant of involvement and this in fact correlated with believing the advertising and ultimately buying the advertised product. That paper summarised all of the involvement measures currently in use and demonstrated which ones correlated with effective advertising and which didn't. Reading environment and other issues also are missing from current readership.

Well what do we do? Do we follow readership or circulation? Murdoch magazines have for a long time now conducted there own in house reader surveys and after looking at the discrepancy between readers and circulation for Better Homes and Gardens one can see why. Other publishers are now following this approach.

Clearly an industry standard in which people have complete confidence needs to be established along with a methodology the industry can agree on. Where is our JICNARS (UK Joint Industry Committee for Newsprint Audience Research) or the Advertising Research Foundation Readership Committee (USA) to name but two. We desperately need an industry body to manage readership in the same way that we have it for television audience research. It is ridiculous that in the rest of the Western World readership research is the responsibility of the advertising industry as a whole and in Australia it is in the hands of a market research agency.

Gary Morgan evidently agrees when it comes to the relationship between readership and circulation. In a paper presented on behalf of Morgan Readership in Berlin in 1995 he concludes by saying, “Most often the cause for an increase or drop in RPC (Readers per copy) is to be found in changes in the market place – and it is then the obligation of the publisher in cooperation with the data collector to investigate.

“However a change in RPC (Readers per copy) could be caused by the methodology or changes in the methodology. These possible causes should be investigated by the data collector before releasing the readershipBack to top