Roy Morgan figures show The Australian stretching its lead over rivals

Readership data from research company Roy Morgan shows The Australian increased its cross-platform dominance over its main commercial rival, The Australian Financial Review, in 2024.

Bucking a wider industry trend, The Australian’s print audience jumped by five per cent in the year to December 31. Picture: John Feder

The Australian’s print audience jumped by five per cent in the year to December 31, bucking a wider industry trend of a sharp decline in newspaper readership.

According to audience figures released on Monday by research company Roy Morgan, The Australian also increased its cross-platform (print and digital) dominance over its main commercial rival, The Australian Financial Review, in 2024.

Among the nation’s major newspaper titles, The Australian’s 5 per cent surge in print last year — an increase of 20,000 readers — was bettered only by the weekday Herald Sun, which grew its average audience by 7.1 per cent year-on-year.

The Adelaide Advertiser also recorded a print readership rise (up 2.3 per cent).

But every other major metro weekday title across the nation lost chunks of its print audience last year.

Readership of Nine’s The Age slumped 10.3 per cent, the Sydney Morning Herald fell by 6.7 per cent, while the weekday edition of the AFR also owned by Nine Entertainment, lost ground as well.

Indeed, of the eight metro titles owned by Nine, only the lowly-read weekend edition of the AFR recorded an improvement in 2024.

Its average monthly readership jumped by 1000, or 0.5 per cent.

Seven West Media’s three metro titles — the West Australian, the Saturday West Australian, and the Sunday Times — also experienced downturns in their average print readership in the year to December 31.

With regards to cross-platform audiences, the SMH and The Age again registered the biggest falls among the major metro mastheads, losing 7.1 per cent and 5.1 per cent of their readerships respectively.

According to the Roy Morgan data, over the course of 2024, the SMH shed more than half a million readers across print and digital.

The AFR’s cross-platform audience fell by 2 per cent, while The Australian’s dipped by 1.9 per cent year-on-year, though it did register 0.4 per cent growth in the final quarter of 2024.

Across print and digital, The Australian is read by more than four million consumers each month, with its cross-platform audience more than 17 per cent higher than that of the AFR.

The Australian’s premium business coverage continues to outperform its rivals, with a 2.3 per cent growth in readership in 2024.

Over the same period, the AFR’s Companies & Markets section shed 12.5 per cent of its audience.

The higher education section of The Australian, which is published on Wednesdays, increased its average issue readership by 31.7 per cent, while the masthead’s media pages, which appear on Mondays, registered a 2.9 per cent audience lift year-on-year.

Strengthening their cross-platform reach in 2024 were News Corp’s state-based titles, the Courier-Mail (+12.6 percent), the Herald Sun (+5.8 per cent) and the Daily Telegraph (+0.4 per cent).

The Sunday Telegraph remains the most popular newspaper in Australia, with an average of 788,000 readers per edition (down 8.3 per cent on the previous year).

Among magazines, niche inner-city title The Monthly experienced a dramatic collapse in its cross-platform readership in 2024, shedding 33 per cent of its audience year-on-year.

Vogue remains the top prestige fashion brand within Australia, extending its cross-platform dominance over its main competitor, Marie Claire, while the readership of Vogue Living edged up by 0.8 per cent last year.