TOTAL newspaper readership in Australia has declined by just 0.8 per cent in the past 12 months despite intensifying competition from other media.
News Limited, publisher of about 70 per cent of the nation's newspapers, said the decline appeared mainly due to readers shifting from printed newspapers to websites.
News chairman and chief executive John Hartigan said: "Despite often quoted concerns about consumers migrating to the internet, newspaper readership continues to hold up well and newspaper mastheads now have a meaningful opportunity to dramatically increase their reach from their combined print and online offers.
"Equally, newspapers are continuing to outperform free-to-air television and radio."
The Roy Morgan Research figures for the year to June 30 indicate that newspapers have 11.77 million readers each week - an 0.4 per cent rise on four years ago.
Readership of The Australian, Monday to Friday, remained steady at 416,000 a day, but The Weekend Australian declined 3.1 per cent to 843,000 readers, which publisher News Limited blamed on "more aggressive sampling by competitors, particularly in NSW".
The Australian Financial Review's Monday to Friday edition declined marginally while its Saturday edition picked up 19,000 readers to a total of 181,000.
All the major daily papers in NSW lost readers and only The Age, with a marginal lift, and The Sunday Age, with a 7.2 per cent increase, bucked the trend in Victoria.
Don Churchill, managing director, Victoria, of Fairfax metropolitan, regional and community newspapers, said The Sunday Age's readership had hit a record level and was the fastest growing newspaper in the country.
In Queensland, The Courier Mail - in the first test of its new compact format - lost 20,000 readers Monday to Friday and 21,000 on Saturdays. The Queensland regional papers - especially The Townsville Bulletin - showed strong growth.
In Adelaide, The Advertiser declined 1.6 per cent on its daily readership but improved with its Saturday edition.
In Perth, The West Australian and the Sunday Times recorded declines.
All three editions of the Canberra Times suffered substantial falls - the Sunday edition by 8 per cent.
Both major publishers continue to question the methodology of the figures - News pointing to unexplained shifts in readership of Sunday newspapers in Victoria which bear almost no correlation to circulation results and dramatic turnarounds or declines in some titles year on year.
A spokesman for News said it had raised 11 separate issues with Roy Morgan research and was awaiting a response.
Audited circulation figures for all major publications are due out next Thursday.
