market
Mail & Guardian reporter
The Mail & Guardian’s circulation grew by 6% between the last six months of 1997 and the last six months of 1998, as quality niche publications bucked the trend of declining newspaper circulations throughout the country.
According to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation figures, the M&G sold an average of 36 107 copies a week between July and December last year, compared to 34 144 between July and December 1997. The only other South African newspaper with a higher year-on-year increase was Business Day, which moved up 8% in the same period to 43 006.
For the rest it was carnage in the market. Mass circulation dailies recorded sharp declines. The Sowetan was down 8% year on year, the Cape Argus seven, the Eastern Province Herald seven, the Natal Witness four, the Cape Times six, The Citizen seven, Beeld five, the Daily News four, the Evening Post 11 and the Mercury three.
The only titles to hold their own were Die Burger which went up 1% and the Pretoria News and The Star which stayed the same.
Weeklies fared slightly better, remaining more or less stagnant – the Sunday Times dropped 2% (to 449 030), The Sunday Independent went up two (to 39 176), Saturday Star up one (to 152 316), Die Burger’s Saturday edition up two (to 120 106) and the Sunday Tribune down three (to 110 582).
Faring worse were Rapport (-4), City Press (- 6), the Weekend Argus (-5) and the Saturday editions of The Citizen (-5), EP Herald (-6) and Beeld (-5).
The circulation figures are alarming news for an industry already facing cutbacks. Independent Newspapers has begun scaling back and there was talk this week of a further 400 redundancies in the company.
The precipitous decline at Independent contrasts with the more highly niched English-language group, Times Media Limited, whose frontline publications such as Business Day and the Financial Mail continued to make gains.