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News Limited titles increased their share of the major newspaper market in the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations assessment, The Australian and the Herald Sun both breaking their weekday circulation records.
Monday to Friday sales of The Australian increased by 2.9 per cent to 136,917 in the six months to September 2005, the highest weekday circulation in the newspaper’s 41-year history. Sales of The Australian’s only national rival, The Australian Financial Review, increased 0.2 per cent to 85,665 over the same period.
Nine of the 10 top titles were from the News Limited stable, with 13.3 million News Limited newspapers sold in Australia each week.
Part of this growth was attributed to the company’s regional newspapers, with The Gold Coast Bulletin Monday to Friday registering the highest circulation increase of any newspaper.
News Limited chief executive officer John Hartigan says it was a pleasing result as it had been a challenging year for newspaper circulation generally.
“However there is still a lot to achieve and our faith in being able to significantly grow newspapers as a category is demonstrated in the investments we continue to make in upgrading technology and launching new products for readers and advertisers,” says Hartigan.
New products include Alpha magazine, which has sold over 250,000 copies a month in its first three months, and three new glossy magazines launched this month in The Australian, The Advertiser and The Courier-Mail.
