Newspapers Fund More Readership Data

Several quality national newspapers have joined up with agencies and independents to commission a research project into readership data.

The Telegraph, Guardian, Observer, Independent and News International have funded research from Millward Brown. It analyses the readership of Saturday papers compared with weekday papers, looks at how different the readers are and how the title is read. It also covers Sunday papers and the different sections of the papers.

The initiative is a follow-up to the 1990 one-off Quality Daily Newspaper Group.

Roger Beeson, managing director of National Readership Survey, pointed out to MediaTel this morning that the NRS data actually provides specific topic interest details, and that tests are currently being carried out for Saturday data. He is “fairly optimistic” that this data will be put onto the NRS on 1 January next year.

At present the NRS is working on a way of recording quality of reading figures and this will be discussed at the board meeting on 22 October. This is likely to be tested from 1 January.

NRS 071 379 0344.