Pixabay
Audit Bureau of Circulations data for the fourth quarter of 2020 is harrowing: there will be no rebound for print, and newspapers in particular.
The long, slow structural decline of the sector in South Africa has reached the point of no return. Circulations for daily newspapers are down by 40%, on average, over one year. Not included in this drop are the two titles that ceased publication as dailies during 2020: Die Volksblad (Bloemfontein) is now “digital-only” while the DFA (Kimberley) now only publishes on Fridays.
In extreme cases, including many titles in the Independent Media stable, the declines are over 60%. Total circulation for the Pretoria News is down 80% since 2019. It sells just over 1 900 copies a day now.
Certain titles have fared better, with year-on-year declines of under 20%. Die Burger, which seems to be thriving in the vacuum being produced by the regression of the Cape Times and Cape Argus (both down 62%), saw circulation down only 7%.
‘Free circulation’
Some titles are being propped up by free circulation, where thousands of free copies are given away daily to help the papers justify their advertising rates. The Star has “free circulation” of 8 157 copies a day, which accounts for nearly four in 10 of its papers “sold”. If one considers paid circulation only, Business Day sells just 1 162 fewer copies a day than The Star.
Across a five-year period (since Q4 2016), the declines are even more dramatic.
Overall, circulation for the 17 daily papers in the country is 60% lower. Eight papers have seen declines of more than 60%, with Pretoria News down 87%, The Star down 75% and Cape Argus and Cape Times each down around 70%. The best performing title since 2016 is The Citizen, with a circulation decline of 32%.
Daily circulation 2020 vs 2016 for newspapers in the Eastern Cape
Daily Dispatch: -45%
Herald: -36%
visit www.moneyweb.co.za for the full graph of all newspapers in the country.
Reasons for hope
There are reasons to hope. Daily Maverick, Ground Up, amaBunghane, News24 and Netwerk24 as well as niche sites like Moneyweb, TechCentral and MyBroadband/BusinessTech have built sustainable, sizeable businesses online.
Increasingly, they are using business models that favour subscription. Online advertising will yield some revenue, but no one can run a news organisation on Google AdWords or programmatic advertising revenue. The numbers aren’t big enough. Added to this is the fact that print publishers lost much of the opportunity to convert their advertisers to digital long ago.
Two fundamental questions remain: how does the news industry convert many more than the few thousand people who already pay to become online subscribers? And how do digital publishers attract ad spend away from hyper-efficient Facebook and Google?
