Feature: National Newspaper Supplements

This week the national newspaper market found a new battleground for readership figures when the Daily Mail responded to the launch of the Mirror‘s new magazine for women, M, with their own title of the same name. The launches highlight the increasing importance of supplements to national dailies and the need for detailed research into their readership.

The issue will be addressed at today’s board meeting for the National Readership Survey (NRS) when the main representative groups for the newspaper and periodical industries will discuss a new research contract and look at ways that the NRS can be improved.

In recent months, however, NRS national newspaper supplements research has been seen to be lacking. At present the survey gives detailed analysis of only 21 separate newspaper supplements and there is a need within the industry for a more detailed study of this expanding area.

In the last five years the extra sections in newspapers have pushed the total weekly number of pages in national newspapers by up to 40% in some cases. The Times and Independent have grown the most: the Times now has 222 more pages than in 1994 and the Independent has increased in size by 198 pages. Although this increase in pages may not be exclusively due to added supplements, pullout sections have certainly helped increase the overall size of national papers.

The Guardian now has a total of 16 weekly supplements and the Times and Telegraph each has 14. This year alone the Independent has added two new supplements, the Times has added an extra daily supplement called Times 3 and the Financial Times has just introduced The Business – a new business magazine published each Saturday.

The need for more comprehensive research into these extra sections has led one of the national dailies to take matters into its own hands. The Daily Telegraph announced last week that it is to continue to conduct sectional readership research into its own publications and is also adding Times readership data to the study. However, the need for independent research in this area is still urgent. The Quality of Reading Survey (QRS) goes some way to filling the gap with its research into how people read papers and supplements, but a demographic study into all sections is still lacking.