I was watching people leave the gym (Fitness First, Dee Why) this morning while I was on the treadmill. I got interested in how many people actually took a free copy of the SMH stacked by the exit. In the twenty minutes to 7am, 55 people left and just 19 took a copy. That's 34.5%. That's not great, almost two-thirds didn't want Sydney's broadsheet newspaper at any price, literally. My feeling was that women were more likely to take a copy than men; and more men were in my sample then women. So that might have skewed it a bit.
21 February 2006
Fairfax admit the Herald's got a circulation problem. There's this story from 11 Februrary 2006:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Business/Sales-of-papers-slump-in-Sydney/2005/02/10/1107890344871.html
The nut graf:
"Circulation of the weekday edition of the Herald fell 3.52 per cent year-on-year to 214,005, while the weekend edition fell 5.45 per cent to 352,482."
Recent employment openings with Fairfax Digital suggest that they see a profitable future online.
Posted by: Bob M | 24 February 2006 at 01:29 PM