Weekend Oz gains give it a readership of close to 600,000

The print readership of The Weekend Australian has grown 4.9 per cent to 596,000 readers following a long period of strong growth.

The print readership of The Weekend Australian has grown 4.9 per cent to 596,000 readers following a long period of strong growth.

An extra 28,000 readers over the past 12 months means the News Corp Australia masthead was the only major newspaper to increase readership in May.

Fairfax Media’s Australian Fin­ancial Review Weekend lost 8.9 per cent of its readers for total figures of 113,000, according to the latest Enhanced Media Metrics Australia data.

Weekday newspaper readership across the sector remains challenging, although the Monday to Friday edition of The Australian fared better than most. It slipped 5.3 per cent to 469,000 while many other major news­papers saw bigger falls, including the Australian Financial Review.

The Monday to Friday edition of the AFR fell 16 per cent to 283,000, which means The Australian’s audience is more than 1.5 times bigger during the week.

The Australian’s multiplatform audience eased down 0.9 per cent to 3.2 million readers as it holds steady after several years of double-digit growth.

Among the sections offered by The Australian, readership of the Australian Business Review rose 55.9 per cent to 198,000. The Monday Media section recorded another strong performance — up 28.6 per cent to 198,000.

At the weekend, the Australian Business Review pushed 13.7 per cent higher to 333,000, accompanied by gains among the mastheads’ three main inserts. The Deal magazine was up 14 per cent to 49,000, Wish rose 14.8 per cent to 124,000, and the Weekend Australian Magazine climbed 2.2 per cent to 469,000.

Total cross-platform audiences at News Corp mastheads are on the rise for The Adelaide Advertiser and The Courier-Mail as well as most regional titles, including the Geelong Advertiser, The Mercury, Northern Territory News, The Morning Bulletin and the Townsville Bulletin.

Many News Corp regional ­titles have also expanded total cross-platform audiences, including the Townsville Bulletin.