Roy Morgan Research has released the Print Readership and Cross-Platform Audience results for the year to September 2016, showing print magazines reaching 12,575,000 Australians older than 14, a 2.7 per cent jump compared with the 12 months to September 2015.
Food and entertainment was the best-performing category overall, with 17.1 per cent readership growth, followed by sports (15.4 per cent), general interest (six per cent) and health and family (five per cent).
The rising interest in food and entertainment is due in part to the continuing strong growth for supermarket titles, with Coles Magazine readership up 31 per cent to 3,672,000 and that of Woolworths’ Fresh up 25.4 per cent to 3,272,000, according to Roy Morgan Research.
Two other top 20 titles in the category also posted double-digit gains: Taste.com.au Magazine (up 36.7 per cent to 607,000) and Recipes+ (up 13.2 per cent to 421,000). Not to be outdone, some smaller titles also posted strong gains that reiterated the category’s overall advance, including Selector (up 44.9 per cent to 100,000), Gourmet Traveller Wine (up 20.7 per cent to 105,000) and Delicious (up 5.5 per cent to 364,000).
“Readership of print magazines continues to grow, up 2.7 per cent year on year, including almost 100,000 compared with previous quarterly results in June,” Roy Morgan Research CEO Michele Levine said.
“The continued success of both Coles Magazine and Fresh highlights the increasing influence of retailers in the media space. The leading supermarkets and department stores each produce their own magazines through collaboration with the major print publishing houses.”