Print readership was up overall for magazines in the categories of Food & Entertainment (up 13.9%), Sports (up 2.8%) and Women’s Youth (up 2.0%) in Roy Morgan Research’s Australian Magazine Readership results for the year to June 2015.
Roy Morgan found that 12,378,000 Australians 14+ read the latest issue of at least one print magazine on average, down just 1.9% from 12,623,000 in the year to June 2014.
Seven magazines reached a million or more readers per average issue. Supermarket freebie Coles Magazine maintains top spot with 2,721,000 readers (down 6.7%) while Woolworth’s Fresh is close behind on 2,522,000 (up 15.6% compared with the average issue in the year to June 2014).
Better Homes and Gardens is almost unchanged year-on-year with 1,820,000 readers. Women’s Weekly dipped 2.4% to 1,757,000 readers, Woman’s Day fell 12.4% to 1,514,000 and New Idea by -3.3% to 1,214,000.
In Sport, Rugby League magazines’ 2015 readership started higher than 2014. Rugby League Week has 182,000 readers (up 18.2%) and Big League 70,000 (up 45.8%). The leading Australian Rules magazine AFL Record held on to its average 211,000 readers, while Inside Football lost ground by 10.0% to 54,000 readers. Sales for Inside Sport were flat at -0.9% to 113,000. Modern Fishing was up 6.5% to 164,000, while Fishing World lost 11.6% to 167,000.
For car enthusiasts revving up were Australian 4WD Action, up 14.8% to 310,000, Wheels, up 4.2% to 247.000, and Just Cars grew 1.3% to 232,000. Slowing down were Motor magazine by 12.6% to 125,000, Street Machine, down 8.4% to 241,000, Top Gear dropped 17.2% to 322,000, and Unique Cars fell 17.2% to 183,000.
Men’s and ‘Lad’ magazines continued their decline with Zoo Weekly down 34.3% to 138,000, People lost 13.7% to 82,000, while The Picture was down 21.9% to 50,000.
On 20 August, Coles announced that it had withdrawn Zoo magazine from its shelves following a range review. However some media reports indicate that a Change.org petition calling on the big two supermarket chains to stop selling Zoo Weekly may have had an impact on this decision.