Lyndall Campher
NIGEL BRUCE’S departure from Financial Mail for Finance Week has shaken up the financial newspaper industry and not a moment too soon. Businessmen are now confronted with an interesting and diverse array of choice, unlike the business environment when Financial Mail and Business Day were initially launched.
This array of choice extends beyond print and into the more recently launched international business news television networks such as CNN, Sky News and BBC News.
An analysis by All Media and Product Survey (AMPS) 1996 of upper-income white males (household income of R6 000-plus per month) indicates that in this market, certain publications have a higher reach; for example, Business Times versus Business Report.
The Business Times has 208 000 readers versus 134 000 for Business Report, and the Financial Mail has a higher penetration than Business Day (47 000 versus 36 000).
A comparison with AMPS 1991, bearing in mind that the marketplace has changed substantially since then, shows decreases among most financial publications, meaning that financial news is not penetrating the market as well as it should, even though the income level of readers was cut to R4 000- plus per month.
The evolution which has taken place more recently has made the financial marketplace more competitive and hence far more fractionalised than ever before. Hopefully this will contribute to an increase in readers of financial news.
Some of the developments are:
* the launch of Business Report, which strengthened the business editorial of The Cape Times and Natal Mercury;
* the relaunch of the Saturday Star’s financial section, with the incorporation of Personal Finance;
* the Sowetan entering the business market on a monthly basis; and
* Business Day’s diversification into Business Tonight on TV.
What this laundry list of transformation illustrates is that financial coverage, once the domain of magazines, has been eroded by newspapers.
Lyndall Campher is group media director at Hunt Lascaris and will be providing a fortnightly look at AMPS and ABC figures, keeping the media and marketing industries up to date