Press, magazines and radio figures make for bad reading

16Feb09

Media trade publications are reporting consistently bad news for traditional media properties at the moment.

The current B&T highlights the drop in weekly magazine sales.

• New Weekly (NW) is down 16.4%

• New Idea, OK & Woman’s Day are all down around 12%

• Zoo Weekly down 8.1%

B&T is also running a story on the drop in men’s monthlies:

• FHM down 24.2%

• Ralph down 22%

• Alpha down 16%

• Only Men’s Health bucked the trend with a 10.7% increase in sales.

Meanwhile Metropolitan Sunday papers have fallen almost 4% compared to last year accoding to the latest audit figures. Metropolitan dailies fell by 1.9% while Metro Saturday papers defied the trend and actually grew 1.7%, mainly due to a 3% gain by The Weekend Australian.

Radio hit too

Finally radio is proving that its not immune from the tough conditions. Austereo has reported steady profits but a drop in revenue in figures for the last six months released to the Australian Stock Exchange. Austereo revealed that sales revenue for the period was down by about $5m, or 3%.

“We anticipate tight conditions through the second half,” the group’s chairman Peter Harvie said, adding that the group expected commercial radio industry advertising to fall around 5 per cent.

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