NRS data indicates extent of lost Sunday newspaper readers

Ping! 9.50am Last Friday an email hits my inbox from the National Readership Survey (NRS).

To say it was eagerly awaited may be a slight exaggeration but nonetheless I had a deadline and my editor’s strict on time.

I had a few ideas of what might be in the data, a few hypotheses and a reasonable hunch to what areas to look at; News of the World closing and the consequent impact for other Sunday newspapers; the moving of the News of the World supplement, Fabulous, to publication with Saturday’s Sun; the first readership estimate for ‘i’ and how it compares to the unabridged Independent.

Firstly, I doubted very much that there would be any defining conclusion from the closure of the News of the World. Yes, monthly circulation data has been available through ABC and sometimes in weekly form from leaked sources…do all organisations leak like sieves?

Trying to make a comparison between readership and circulation data is always fraught with difficulty and in my experience should be avoided – especially over small periods of time and amongst sensitive editorial people.  I am convinced though that over a long period there is a positive correlation between the two different sets of data.

As Mike Ironside said in his email notes, “…It will take some time for the market to settle down following the major closure of the News of the World. However, it’s fair to say at this point the data indicates a significant number of readers appear to have dropped out of the Sunday market completely.”

Ironside has the benefit of looking at the quarterly data, which is not published on the bulletin.  Quite rightly, he has taken the opportunity to deliver some insight to subscribers and the market.  And, importantly the data matches what you might have hypothesised and in some respects the circulation data.  The 3 month data for readership of national Sunday newspapers for July – September is down 17% or 3.4 million readers to 15.9 million compared to the previous quarter April – June (note the News of the World’s last issue was 10th July).  With an historical approximation of readers per copy of 2.8, a loss of 1.2 million copies for the market seems realistic.

Ping! Another email arrives from the NRS.  The previous email with the attached data was incomplete…Damn!

OK, so they didn’t supply the 6 monthly data…no harm done…I hadn’t even got to that yet.

Looking at the 6 months data the Mirror titles were up but not enough to be statistically significant. The Sunday Express recorded a 9% increase but that wasn’t significant either.  Both the Mail on Sunday and Daily Star Sunday were down…but again not significant at the 95% confidence limit.

I must admit the NRS notes are helpful.  Nowadays significant changes are highlighted prominently, whether they are positive or negative.  Years ago they were just ignored with publishers making claims to their readers and advertising sales teams using increases to counteract circulation data going in the opposite direction.  Then all our misuses were threatened with reprimand but some still ignored the warnings.  However, it taught us to hand crank our analysis and be confident to drive insights on really what the NRS was able to tell us. What it could be used for.  What we shouldn’t rely on it for.

To a large extent the long learning campaign seems to be working.  A number of publishers would complain or launch an investigation when there readership performance totally contradicted there circulation performance.  Not unusually this was when sales were improving and readership was going down.  I heard of only one publisher who queried the data when the reverse was true!

That is why before analysing and using results of surveys we should be aware of the best way to use what is a very valuable tool with a considerable amount of investment behind it.  Yes, the NRS aims to measure readership for over 200 publications.

But what is it measuring? What do respondents think they are asking?

To believe someone can remember every bit of stimulus they may have read (for however short or long a time) would be naïve. However, I believe respondents are fair in their attribution and recognise their habitual habits. But as users of the survey we have to accept that the NRS is a brand survey too. As much as the claims are about exact behaviour…there is also a strong element in the claim resulting from strong brand awareness and perception.

Out of the 270 titles or so, 20 publications were down by enough readers to be significantly different. The quality newspapers fared badly with the Daily Telegraph, The Times and Sunday Times all down over 10% on the 12 months data compared to last year.

The lad’s mags such as Nuts, Zoo and Loaded continue to haemorrhage readers and the celeb titles such as Heat, OK! and Reveal all suffered double digit percentage declines. With the Leveson Inquiry still in full swing and the UK publics conscious pricked into a possible backlash against the way some celebrity content is gathered this genre may be in for a tricky time.

There are only 2 titles that saw ‘significant’ gains for the 12 months. This was The Economist and TV Choice.

The Economist is up 21% to a claimed readership estimate of 597,000 – may not be surprising in this time of economic uncertainty.  However, The Economist is starting to make a business out of digital subscriptions.  The magazine announced it past 100,000 paid for subs for the first time in October.  Obviously this is global and subscribers get free online access whether across tablet, e-reader, web or mobile.

The current NRS questioning precludes respondents from answering whether they view a publications online offering. However, the fusing of NRS data with UKOM/Nielsen online data will be interesting.  This is due for release in Spring 2012 and the data on The Economist might be worth studying.