Magazines Strengthen Performance In Latest Surveys

Magazines Strengthen Performance In Latest Readership Surveys

More than 33% of all magazine titles in the latest ACNielsen Readership Survey have hit all time highs.

Twenty four titles within the survey have reached new levels of readership. These include a wide range of titles, from Autotrader, to NZ NetGuide and Cuisine.

Magazine Publishers' Association executive director John McClintock says it's an excellent result for the industry.

"Today's figures show that magazines are stronger than ever. While the trend of major increases for niche magazines continues to climb, the volume of magazine readership has increased on the same time last year," he says.

The most read title in the country is the New Zealand Women's Weekly, followed by The TV Guide, which previously held the position, and in third position is Woman's Day. Skywatch is in fourth place, and is the magazine most read by men.

Rounding out the top 10 most read titles are AA Directions, Reader's Digest , Sunday Star Times, NZ House & Garden, Australian Women's Weekly and New Idea, in that order.

McClintock says while the events of September 11th were good for current affairs magazines such as the New Zealand edition of Time, which increased readership from 238,000 to 277,000, those increases were at the expense of more local equivalents.

Circulation figures for the same period (July ? December 2001) have also been released (www.abc.org.nz) , and McClintock says there's been another strong increase in both circulation and readership for lifestyle and niche magazines.

"Cuisine has shown a stunning increase in net circulation, from 55,976 to 31/12/00 to 74,782 at 31/12/01. Other magazines that have also significantly increased circulation as well as readership include NZ House and Garden from 67,848 to 80,390 for the same period, New Zealand Home and Entertaining from 17,605 to 20,246; computer magazines such as New Zealand NetGuide from 32,050 to 33,532 and New Zealand PC World from 19,485 to 21,470."

"These figures reinforce what we've been saying for some time about the ability of magazines to target and successfully reach different niches of the New Zealand consumer market. The Internet has not had the effect people feared on the magazine industry ? it's very difficult to relax with a computer at the beach!"

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