Morgan Readership: 15.7 million read newspapers in print or online

Roy Morgan has released its latest readership results for Australian newspapers for the 12 months to December 2018.

Over 15.7 million, or 76.9%, of Australians aged 14+ now read or access newspapers in an average seven day period via print or online (website or app) platforms, a fall of 1.3% from a year ago.

Although most leading newspapers had a decline in total cross-platform readership there were several bright spots. The Herald Sun grew its digital audience to over 2 million and The Australian Financial Review also increased its digital audience over the last year, up by 1.2% to 1,169,000.

In addition Western Australia’s leading newspaper the West Australian grew its print readership 7.3% to nearly 750,000 and The Saturday Paper had strong growth across print readership, digital audience and total cross-platform audience.

These are the latest findings from the Roy Morgan Single Source survey of 50,853 Australians aged 14+ in the 12 months to December 2018.

Australia’s most widely read masthead continues to be The Sydney Morning Herald – with a cross-platform audience of 4,135,000, down 2.8% from a year ago. Despite this decrease in audience the SMH increased its lead over Sydney rival The Daily Telegraph, which now has a cross-platform audience of 2,989,000, down 13.3% in a year.

Melbourne daily the Herald Sun with a cross-platform audience of 2,984,000 (down 0.6%) has out-pointed local rival The Age with a cross-platform audience of 2,816,000 (down 8%).